2004/11/12 by Martin Oettel, M. Oettel, A. Dominguez +2 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Surfactants and Colloidal Systems #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.71.051401
published as Phys. Rev. E 71, 051401 (2005) · 23 pages
arxiv created 2004/11/12 · openalex publication_date 2005/05/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a detailed analysis of the effective force between two smooth spherical colloids floating at a fluid interface due to deformations of the interface in an inhomogeneous pressure field. The results hold in general and are applicable independently of the source of the deformation provided the capillary deformations are small so that a superposition approximation for the deformations is valid. We conclude that an effective long-ranged attraction is possible if the net force on the system does not vanish. Otherwise, the interaction is short ranged and cannot be computed reliably based on the superposition approximation. As an application, we consider the case of like-charged, smooth nanoparticles and electrostatically induced capillary deformation. The resulting long-ranged capillary attraction can be easily tuned by a relatively small external electrostatic field, but it cannot explain recent experimental observations of attraction if these experimental systems were indeed isolated.