Coupling Effects of Depletion Interactions in Colloidal Suspensions

Haixia Gao, Zeshun Chen, Chunshu Li, Changming Xiao

Department of Electronic Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Engineering, Yongzhou, China.
Department of Electronic Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Engineering, Yongzhou,China.
Department of Physics, Hunan Normal University, Changsha,China.

DOI: 10.4236/jmp.2012.39119                

Abstract

The depletion interactions of the three-sphere system in which the three spheres are on one line are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The depletion interactions are determined by ARM, and the coupling effect was proved by the numerical result that the depletion interactions in the three-sphere system are larger than that of the corresponding two-sphere system. Furthermore, we find that the mechanisms of the coupling effect and the effect on depletion force from the geometry factor are the same. In addition, the numerical results also show that this coupling effect will be affected by both the volume fraction and separation of three-sphere system.

Keywords

Three-Sphere System; Coupling Effect of Depletion Interactions

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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