Effective attractions between like-charged colloidal particles

We apply the Ornstein-Zernike equations together with the extended Zerah-Hansen approach, described in a previous paper [J. Chem. Phys. 109, 11074 (1998)], to determine the microstructure of a colloidal suspension at finite concentrations. Using these results as an input, the effective pair potential between two colloidal particles is also calculated following the general approach described in that paper. It is found that, for sufficiently large concentrations, this effective potential develops an attractive well with a minimum located at a distance of almost four macroparticle diameters. It is also shown that this attraction is generated by the inversion of the sign of the effective charged distribution surrounding each macroparticle involved in the electrostatic component of the effective pair potential. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.