On the structure factor of liquid-like ordered binary mixtures of colloidal suspensions

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Mixtures of liquid-like ordered polymer colloid suspensions made from particles with diameters 50 and 99 nm are investigated by polarized light scattering. The experimental results are compared with two theoretical approaches: the substitutional model with rescaled mean spherical approximation (RMSA) and the two-particle model with hypernetted chain (HNC) approximation. Although the two-particle model with HNC approximation provides a slightly better representation of the data than the substitutional model with RMSA, neither of the two approaches is in satisfactory agreement with the experiments. An improved theory should take into account the intrinsic polydispersity of the polymer particle species. Further, a systematic theoretical investigation, in which both the substitutional and the two-particle model are each combined with any of the available statistical methods as RMSA, HNC, PY and a mixture of the HNC and the PY closures, would be very useful.