Colloidal charge renormalization in suspensions containing multivalent electrolyte

Abstract

A theory is proposed which allows us to self-consistently calculate the effective colloidal charge and the counterion and coion density profiles in suspensions containing both multivalent and monovalent electrolytes. The formation of counterion-coion clusters is explicitly taken into account. The theory predicts that sufficiently strongly charged colloidal particles will become overcharged. The addition of monovalent electrolyte decreases the counterion condensation and diminishes the amount of charge reversal. Predictions of the theory are compared with the Monte Carlo simulations and are found to be in excellent agreement without any adjustable parameters.