THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MACROSPHERES IN SOLUTION

A molecular theory of the interaction of macrospheres in solution is obtained from the Ornstein-Zernike equations for a few large spheres in a fluid. This theory is a natural extension of the DLVO theory with the oscillatory contribution to the force arising from the hard core exclusions among the water molecules and with the extra repulsion arising from the alignment of the water dipoles near the spheres. The agreement with the experimental results of Israelachvili, et al., is good. Also the force between macrospheres in a fluid is examined near the critical point of a fluid and is found to vanish at the critical point.