Depletion interactions in binary mixtures of repulsive colloids

Abstract

Acceptance ratio method, which has been used to calculate the depletion potential in binary hard-sphere mixtures, is extended to the computation of the depletion potential of non-rigid particle systems. The repulsive part of the Lennard-Jones pair potential is used as the direct pair potential between the non-rigid particles. The depletion potential between two big spheres immersed in a suspension of small spheres is determined with the acceptance ratio method through the application of Monte Carlo simulation. In order to check the validity of this method, our results are compared with those obtained by the Asakura-Oosawa approximation, and by Varial expansion approach, and by molecular dynamics simulation. The total effective potential and the depth of its potential well are computed for various softness parameters of the direct pair potential.