Theories of phase separation in charged colloidal dispersions

TL;DRAbstract

Gas-liquid and liquid-solid phase separations observed in charged colloidal dispersions appear to contradict the theory of electrical double layer interactions which is one of the foundation elements of the Deryaguin-Landau-Verway- Overbeek (DLVO) theory of colloid stability. The treatment of Coulombic interactions in colloidal systems developed separately from the theory of electrolytes because of the large charge asymmetry between the constituents. Recently the deployment of modern theoretical approaches based on field theoretical techniques of physics or density functional theories of solid state theory appear to have yielded new insight into the problem. We demonstrate that the long-ranged nature of the Coulombic potential require careful consideration in order to match the results of more recent approaches to what has been establised intuition in the field and to give a proper physical interpretation to the results.

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