Phase coexistence in polydisperse mixture of hard-sphere colloidal and flexible chain particles

A theoretical scheme for the calculation of the full phase diagram (including cloud and shadow curves, binodals and distribution functions of the coexisting phases) for colloid-polymer mixtures with polymer chain length polydispersity and hard-sphere colloidal and polymeric monomer sizes polydispersity is proposed. The scheme combines the thermodynamic perturbation theory for associating fluids and the recently developed method used to determine the phase diagram of polydisperse spherical shape colloidal fluids [Bellier-Castella et al. J. Chem. Phys. 113 (2000) 8337]. By way of illustration we present and discuss the full phase diagram for the mixture with polydispersity in the size of the hard-sphere colloidal particles. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.