COLLOIDAL DISPERSION CONFINED IN A PLANAR SLIT - A DENSITY-FUNCTIONALAPPROACH

We present a simple density functional approach for the prediction of the local density profile of a colloidal suspension confined in a char ged planar slit. Both the interparticle and wall-particle interactions are modeled to be of screened Coulomb type. The short range part of t he interparticle correlation is treated through a nonperturbative weig hted density approach, while the long range contribution is treated pe rturbatively in terms of the density inhomogeneity. The input correlat ion functions for the bulk fluid are obtained through the rescaled mea n spherical approximation. The calculated density profiles are shown o n an average to compare well with results from computer simulation. (C ) 1996 American Institute of Physics.