2001/02/13 by A. A. Louis, R. Roth
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
published as J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 33, L777 (2001) · 4 pages 4 figures ReVTeX[epsfig,multicol,amssymb] (v2 - reference added)
arxiv created 2001/02/13 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We propose that the behavior of asymmetric binary fluid mixtures with a large class of attractive or repulsive interparticle interactions can be understood by mapping onto effective non-additive hard-sphere models. The latter are best analyzed in terms of their underlying depletion potentials which can be exactly scaled onto known additive ones. By tuning the non-additivity, a wide variety of attractive or repulsive generalized depletion potential shapes and associated phase behavior can be ``engineered'', leading, for example, to two ways to stabilize colloidal suspensions by adding smaller particles.