RESCALED MEAN SPHERICAL APPROXIMATION FOR WALL-PARTICLE CORRELATIONS IN COLLOIDAL SUSPENSIONS

The idea of the rescaled mean spherical approximation (RMSA) is extended to describe the local concentration profile of a suspension of highly charged particles near a charged wall. The predictions of this essentially analytic approximation for the wall-particle correlations, under conditions that the "rescaling" is needed, are in excellent quantitative agreement with those of the HNC approximation. It is found that the structure of the inhomogeneous suspension (the magnitude and relative spacing of the oscillations in the local macroparticle concentration, as a function of the distance from the wall) only depends on the bulk properties of the suspension. The charge density of the wall only contributes to determine the displacement of this local structure away from the wall. © 1990 American Institute of Physics.