Contact values of highly asymmetric hard sphere mixtures from Fundamental Measure Density Functional Theory

The White Bear version of Fundamental Measure Theory (FMT-WB) has been tested in binary mixtures of hard spheres in the vicinity of the colloidal limit, where the size ratio of the two species is exceedingly large and the large sphere mole fraction is infinitely low. Contact values of large–large sphere radial distribution functions have been calculated and compared with molecular dynamics simulations and previously proposed theoretical formulas. In contrast to the failure of BMCSL (Boublik, Mansoori, Carnahan, Starling, Leland equation of state) predictions, FMT-WB gives good agreement with simulation for a range of species size ratios and mole fractions. The performance of BMCSL is qualitatively related to one of its model parameters, which could indicate the reliability of the BMCSL result. Our results confirm the accuracy of FMT-WB in the colloidal limit for the first time and suggest that BMCSL contact values must be applied carefully to account for chain connectivity when studying certain cases with classical Density Functional Theories.