Adsorption of sticky hard spheres: relevance to protein competitive adsorption

Abstract

The sticky hard sphere model provides a simple analytic theory of competitive adsorption which may be relevant to the modelling of protein competitive adsorption. Equilibrium monolayer compositions are calculated here for binary mixtures of equal sized molecules as a function of adsorbate concentration and difference in ‘stickiness’ at the adsorbent surface. These numerical results are compared with some of our recent experimental measurements on protein-stabilized emulsions.