Freezing Transition for Colloids with Adjustable Charge: A Test of Charge Renormalization

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Abstract
By exploiting the peculiar adsorption properties of fluorinated surfactants, which allows one to trim the number of ionizable groups on the surface of latex particles, we have determined for the first time the phase diagram of aqueous colloidal suspensions as a function of the bare particle charge. Comparison of the experimental freezing line with numerical simulations of a Yukawa system yields an effective charge in close agreement with the prediction of charge-renormalization models. Conductivity data suggest that effective-charge arguments may also be helpful in studies of transport properties.