Density functional theory for inhomogeneous mixtures of polymeric fluids

A new density functional theory is developed for inhomogeneous mixtures of polymeric fluids by combining Rosenfeld's fundamental-measure theory for excluded volume effects with Wertheim's first-order thermodynamic perturbation theory for chain connectivity. With no adjustable parameters, theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulation data for the density distributions and for the adsorption isotherms of hard-sphere chains near hard walls or in slit-like pores. This theory is applied to calculate the force between two parallel hard walls separated by hard-sphere chains at different densities. Calculated results indicate that the chain-mediated force is attractive and decays monotonically with separation at low chain densities, it oscillates at high chain densities and in between, it is attractive at small separation and repulsive at large separation. This new density functional theory is simpler than similar theories in the literature and is directly applicable to mixtures. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.