Entropic attractions in colloid-polymer solutions

We explore the depletion attractions that arise between hard colloidal spheres immersed in a non-adsorbing polymeric solution of DNA molecules. Using a scanning optical tweezer we were able to spatially confine colloidal particles along a line and quantitatively examine the interaction potential between two 1.25[special characters omitted]m silica spheres moving in various complex fluids. At fixed DNA concentration, we found that the range and depth of the inter-particle potentials did not change for background salt concentrations between 0.1 and 20 mM. Then we fixed the background salt concentration at 10 mM, and measured the inter-particle potentials as a function of DNA concentration. The potentials obtained display variations in depth and range that are consistent with scaling behavior expected for semi-flexible polymers near the theta point. In particular we clearly observe the crossover from a dilute solution of Gaussian coils to the weakly fluctuating semi-dilute regime dominated by two-point collisions. We also quantitatively test the Asakura-Oosawa Model for these systems and show how it can be used in both the dilute as well as the semi-dilute regime. We also explore the dynamics of colloidal particles in background DNA solutions. We find that the Stokes-Einstein picture breaks down in these complex fluids as the size ratio of the probe particle to the characteristic polymer length scale is decreased. We explain these deviations in terms of the changes in the microenvironment caused by the presence of the depletion cavity. The colloidal spheres were also used to probe the transition time scales from the viscoelastic regime to the purely viscous regime