| dc.description |
Sterically stabilized colloidal dispersions, such as PMMA, have long been regarded as archetypal realizations of hard spheres and hard-sphere mixtures. Indeed, this is precisely what is found in studies of these systems as a function of the volume fraction, at constant temperature. However, a much richer behaviour - which goes beyond what is expected from just hard spheres - is found as a function of both volume fraction and temperature T. For instance, sterically stabilized colloids are known to exhibit both upper (high-T) and lower (low-T) two-phase behaviour, such that the former is temperature sensitive but the latter is not. We review model calculations based on a double Yukawa potential that exhibits some of the rich phase behaviour found experimentally, and predicting other behaviour which has not yet been found by experiment. Both the former and latter show a degree of similarity to the phase behaviour of polymer solutions. We also present preliminary results for the phase behaviour of bidisperse model sterically stabilized colloids. |
