A computer model of the adhesion behaviour of particles under the influence of DLVO and hydrophobic interactions

The study of the process of particle coagulation is important in many branches of biomedical engineering. A computer model has been set up in order to aid the evaluation of the likelihood of particle coagulation in a solution. We present a model which focuses on the energy of a system formed by two interacting particles immersed in a medium, assuming that each particle is represented as a hard sphere. The energy is expressed taking into account DLVO and hydrophobic interactions. The DLVO theory of colloidal stability assumes that the coagulation behaviour of particles depends mainly on the van der Waals interaction energy and on the double layer interaction energy. The hydrophobic interaction is an additive short range energy, which takes place in the case of interaction between hydrophobic surfaces. The conditions under which adhesion is prevented correspond to the presence of local extremes of the energy function, whereas the conditions under which adhesion is likely to take place correspond to the absence of local extremes.