Reentrant Solid-Liquid Transition in Ionic Colloidal Dispersions by Varying Particle Charge Density

Abstract

The influence of the particle surface charge density on the solid-liquid phase transition in electrostatically stabilized colloidal silica and polymer latex dispersions is examined. Both systems show a reentrant transition with increasing charge density. This is not explainable in terms of the Yukawa potential and the charge-renormalization model.