Polymer depletion effects near mesoscopic particles
Abstract
The behavior of mesoscopic particles dissolved in a dilute solution of long, flexible, and nonadsorbing polymer chains is studied by field-theoretic methods. For spherical and cylindrical particles the solvation free energy for immersing a single particle in the solution is calculated explicitly. Important features are qualitatively different for self-avoiding polymer chains as compared with ideal chains. The results corroborate the validity of the Helfrich-type curvature expansion for general particle shapes and allow for quantitative experimental tests. For the effective interactions between a small sphere and a wall, between a thin rod and a wall, and between two small spheres quantitative results are presented. A systematic approach for studying effective many-body interactions is provided. The common Asakura-Oosawa approximation modelling the polymer coils as hard spheres turns out to fail completely for small particles and still fails by about 10% for large particles.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9808225,
title = {Polymer depletion effects near mesoscopic particles},
author = {A. Hanke and E. Eisenriegler and S. Dietrich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9808225},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
68 pages, 6 figures