Isostructural solid-solid coexistence of colloid-polymer mixtures

Abstract

Hard spheres mixed with penetrable hard spheres display an isostructural solid–solid transition. This phase transition is fully driven by the entropy gain of the depletants without invoking explicit pair potentials between the colloidal particles. The solid–solid phase coexistence terminates at a critical endpoint with a size ratio . Colloid–polymer mixtures are an excellent candidate for the experimental realization of this intricate solid–solid transition, first predicted by Bolhuis and Frenkel for hard spheres with short range pair attractions [PRL 72, 2211–2214 (1994)].