Depletion interactions in a cylindric pipeline

Abstract

In a colloidal system confined by a small cylindric pipeline, the depletion interaction between two large spheres is different to the system confined by two plates, and the influence on depletion interaction from the pipeline is related to both the size and shape of it. In this paper, the depletion interactions in the systems confined by pipelines of different sizes or different shapes are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The numerical results show that the influence on depletion force from the cylindric pipeline is stronger than that from two parallel plates, and the depletion force will be strengthened when the diameter of the cylinder is decreased. In addition, we also find that the depletion interaction is rather affected if the shape change of the pipeline is slightly changed, and the influence on depletion force from the shape change is stronger than that from the size change.