Intercolloidal Potentials of Mean Force mediated by Homo- and Diblock Polymer Solutions Elucidated by Field-Theoretic Simulations*

Our work probes how polymers of arbitrary design and chemistry in solution mediate the intercolloidal potential of mean force (PMF). Investigations are conducted using Field-Theoretic simulations, which subsequently yield intercolloidal PMF inputs for coarse-grained, particle based simulations. To realize the potential of polymers in colloidal stabilization and/or colloidal assembly, theory and computation are used synergistically to explore the polymer design space (e.g. molecular weight, volume fraction, architecture, interactions and charges). Here, we develop a general approach using complex Langevin sampling of field-theoretic polymer models between colloidal surfaces to provide exact solutions for colloidal-mediated PMFs for polymers of arbitrary design – explicitly including the effects of fluctuations. We show results for several model homopolymer and diblock polymer cases, illustrating the effects of fluctuations and comparing the explicit simulation results to various simple theoretical models.