Thermodynamic instabilities of a binary mixture of sticky hard spheres.

The thermodynamic instabilities of a binary mixture of sticky hard spheres (SHS) in the modified mean spherical approximation (mMSA) and the Percus-Yevick (PY) approximation are investigated using an approach devised by Chen and Forstmann [corrected] [J. Chem. Phys. [corrected] 97, 3696 (1992)]. This scheme hinges on a diagonalization of the matrix of second functional derivatives of the grand canonical potential with respect to the particle density fluctuations. The zeroes of the smallest eigenvalue and the direction of the relative eigenvector characterize the instability uniquely. We explicitly compute three different classes of examples. For a symmetrical binary mixture, analytical calculations, both for mMSA and for PY, predict that when the strength of adhesiveness between like particles is smaller than the one between unlike particles, only a pure condensation spinodal exists; in the opposite regime, a pure demixing spinodal appears at high densities. We then compare the mMSA and PY results for a mixture where like particles interact as hard spheres (HS) and unlike particles as SHS, and for a mixture of HS in a SHS fluid. In these cases, even though the mMSA and PY spinodals are quantitatively and qualitatively very different from each other, we prove that they have the same kind of instabilities. Finally, we study the mMSA solution for five different mixtures obtained by setting the stickiness parameters equal to five different functions of the hard sphere diameters. We find that four of the five mixtures exhibit very different type of instabilities. Our results are expected to provide a further step toward a more thoughtful application of SHS models to colloidal fluids.