Effects of interactions between depletants in phase diagrams of binary hard-sphere systems

Fluid-solid phase diagrams for binary hard-sphere systems were calculated to study the effects of interactions between depletants. Two effective potentials between large hard spheres were examined. One was the Asakura-Oosawa (AO) potential, and the other was an effective potential obtained by using an integral equation theory (IE potential). The IE potential has oscillations caused by the interactions between depletants, whereas in the AO potential, the inter-depletant correlation is ignored. The phase diagrams were obtained by using the thermodynamic perturbation theory with the density functional theory. The phase diagrams for the IE potential systems differed from those for the AO potential systems because of the inter-depletant correlation. The differences in the present calculation were caused by the first minimum of the effective potential.