ISOSTRUCTURAL SOLID-SOLID TRANSITION OF (COLLOIDAL) SIMPLE FLUIDS

A variational approach based on the Gibbs-Bogoliubov inequality is used in order to evaluate the free energy of simple fluids described by a double-Yukawa pair potential. A hard-sphere reference fluid is used to describe the fluid phases, and an Einstein reference crystal to describe the solid phases. Apart from the usual type of phase diagram, typical of atomic simple fluids with long-ranged attractions, we find two types of phase diagrams, specific to colloidal systems with intermediate and short-ranged attractions. One of the latter phase diagrams exhibits an isostructural solid-solid transition, which has not yet been observed experimentally. © 1995 The American Physical Society.