2004/10/24 by Riccardo Fantoni, Domenico Gazzillo, Achille Giacometti
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.1831275
published as J. Chem. Phys. 122, 034901 (2005) · 37 pages, 7 figures, 1 table
arxiv created 2004/10/24 · openalex publication_date 2004/12/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the polydisperse Baxter model of sticky hard spheres (SHS) in the modified mean spherical approximation (mMSA). This closure is known to be the zero-order approximation C0 of the Percus-Yevick closure in a density expansion. The simplicity of the closure allows a full analytical study of the model. In particular we study stability boundaries, the percolation threshold, and the gas-liquid coexistence curves. Various possible subcases of the model are treated in details. Although the detailed behavior depends upon the particularly chosen case, we find that, in general, polydispersity inhibits instabilities, increases the extent of the nonpercolating phase, and diminishes the size of the gas-liquid coexistence region. We also consider the first-order improvement of the mMSA (C0) closure (C1) and compare the percolation and gas-liquid boundaries for the one-component system with recent Monte Carlo simulations. Our results provide a qualitative understanding of the effect of polydispersity on SHS models and are expected to shed new light on the applicability of SHS models for colloidal mixtures.