Phase behavior of colloidal suspensions with critical solvents in terms of effective interactions

We study the phase behavior of colloidal suspensions the solvents of which are considered to be binary liquid mixtures undergoing phase segregation. We focus on the thermodynamic region close to the critical point of the accompanying miscibility gap. There, due to the colloidal particles acting as cavities in the critical medium, the spatial confinements of the critical fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter result in the effective, so-called critical Casimir forces between the colloids. Employing an approach in terms of effective, one-component colloidal systems, we explore the possibility of phase coexistence between two phases of colloidal suspensions, one being rich and the other being poor in colloidal particles. The reliability of this effective approach is discussed. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4722883]