Intermolecular and Surface Forces, 3rd Edition

Chapter 14 Electrostatic Forces between Surfaces in Liquids

14.1 The Charging of Surfaces in Liquids: the Electric “Double-Layer”

Situations in which van der Waals forces alone determine the total interaction are restricted to a few simple systems—for example, to interactions in vacuum or to nonpolar wetting films on surfaces, both of which were discussed in Chapter 13. In more complex, and more interesting, systems long-range electrostatic forces are also involved, and the interplay between these two interactions has many important consequences.

As mentioned earlier the van der Waals force between similar particles in a medium is always attractive, so that if only van der Waals forces were operating, we might expect all dissolved particles ...