PROPERTIES OF JAMMING CONFIGURATIONS BUILT UP BY THE ADSORPTION OF BROWNIAN PARTICLES ONTO SOLID-SURFACES

We study a realistic model for the absorption of colloid particles or latex spheres from solution on a solid surface. The adsorbing particles are represented by hard spheres that undergo Brownian motion in the vicinity of the surface. Once a sphere touches the surface, it becomes permanently fixed in place. We show that the mean coverage and structure of the jammed configurations that result from this irreversible adsorption process are indistinguishable from those of their counterparts generated by a random sequential adsorption (RSA) algorithm. This result demonstrates, a posteriori, the importance of the RSA model in the study of static properties of systems of absorbed particles.