Potential effects on effective attraction between probes diffusing in colloidal crystal.

Abstract

Considering the significant influence of interparticle potentials on traditional depletion forces, we here employ computer simulations to investigate how varying potentials between particles affect the effective interaction of probes diffusing freely in a 2D colloidal crystal. Our results reveal that attractive potentials between the background particles and probes significantly modify the interprobe effective interactions, whereas long-range repulsive tails among the background particles have minimal impact. Furthermore, we observe contrary temperature dependencies of the effective force for soft and stiff repulsions between the background particles. These findings provide deeper insights into how direct interparticle potentials shape entropic-dominated effective forces mediated by colloidal crystals.