Interactions in mixtures of colloid and polymer

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We report results of light scattering study of interactions in a mixture of a surfactant-stabilized colloid and hydrogenated polyisoprene polymer. With a virial expansion the small-angle scattering intensity from the mixture is calculated as a function of colloid and polymer concentrations. Using the obtained formula we measured the mutual excluded volume between a polymer molecule and a colloidal particle, and extracted the second virial coefficient of the colloidal particles in the dilute polymer solution. This scheme of obtaining interaction parameters in the polymer-colloid mixture is capable of probing the changes of the interaction potential for the colloidal suspension due to the addition of free polymer, the so-called depletion effect