ON THE HELMHOLTZ FREE-ENERGY OF HIGHLY-CHARGED PLATES IN AN ELECTROLYTE - REPLY TO THE CRITICISMS

It is shown that the treatment of the interaction of electric double l ayers given by Sogami, Shinohara, and Smalley is a rigorous solution t o the one-dimensional colloid problem. In one criticism Levine and Hal l have claimed that whereas our expression for the adiabatic pair pote ntial is correct, our force expression is incorrect. It is shown that their method contains both a conceptual error and a mathematical mista ke. In another criticism Ettelaie has claimed that we missed a chemica l term in our treatment of the problem, by failing to satisfy the Nern st equation. His argument is answered by demonstrating that including the term which he claims has to be added to the SSS adiabatic pair pot ential leads to the system not being at thermal equilibrium. That incl uding the extra term leads the SSS potential back to the DLVO potentia l shows that the DLVO theory imposes an unphysical Nernstian behavior on colloidal systems.