Screened electrostatic interactions between clay platelets

An effective pair potential for systems of uniformly charged lamellar colloids in the presence of an electrolytic solution of microscopic co- and counterions is derived. The charge distribution on the discs is expressed as a collection of multipole moments, and the tensors which determine the interactions between these multipoles are derived from a screened Coulomb potential. Unlike previous theoretical studies of such systems, the interaction energy may now be expressed for discs at arbitrary mutual orientation. The potential is shown to be exactly equivalent to the use of linearized Poisson-Boltzmann theory.