Sequential deposition of polydisperse particles with double layer interactions: An integral-equation theory

Adsorption of charged colloidal particles to oppositely charged surfaces is usually an irreversible process. The interaction between a pair of particles can be modeled with an exponentially decaying potential originating from double layer interactions. This work explored the effect of the Debye length on monolayer structures using the integral-equation theory which was successfully developed based on a binary-mixture approximation to include the effect of particle size polydispersity. The theoretical results from the integral equations with a Percus–Yevick closure showed that upon increasing the Debye length, the radial distribution functions, g(r), as well as the structure factor, S(k), decreased, in good agreement with simulation results. When the effect of size distributions was investigated, the prominent peak of the radial distribution function increased non-linearly with the product κσav, which followed the same trend as was reported for the case of the jamming coverage of the monolayer film.