Melting and freezing lines for a mixture of charged colloidal spheres with spindle-type phase diagram.

We have measured the phase behavior of a binary mixture of like-charged colloidal spheres with a size ratio of Γ=0.9 and a charge ratio of Λ=0.96 as a function of particle number density n and composition p. Under exhaustively deionized conditions, the aqueous suspension forms solid solutions of body centered cubic structure for all compositions. The freezing and melting lines as a function of composition show opposite behavior and open a wide, spindle shaped coexistence region. Lacking more sophisticated treatments, we model the interaction in our mixtures as an effective one-component pair energy accounting for number weighted effective charge and screening constant. Using this description, we find that within experimental error the location of the experimental melting points meets the range of melting points predicted for monodisperse, one-component Yukawa systems made in several theoretical approaches. We further discuss that a detailed understanding of the exact phase diagram shape including the composition dependent width of the coexistence region will need an extended theoretical treatment.