DLVO theory
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The DLVO theory is named after Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey and Overbeek who developed it in the 1940s.
The theory describes the force between charged surfaces interacting through a liquid medium. It combines the effects of the van der Waals attraction and the electrostatic repulsion due to the so called double-layer of counterions.
The electrostatic part of the DLVO interaction is computed in the mean field approximation. For two spheres of radius a with constant surface charge Z separated by a center-to-center distance r in a fluid of dielectric constant ε containing a concentration n of monovalent ions, the electrostatic potential takes the form of a screened-Coulomb or Yukawa repulsion,
where λB is the Bjerrum length, κ − 1 is the Debye-Hückel screening length, which is given by κ2 = 4πλBn, and β − 1 = kBT is the thermal energy scale at absolute temperature T.
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