  Theory is presented for the phase stability of mixtures containing
nanospheres and non-adsorbing reversible supramolecular polymers. This was made
possible by incorporating the depletion thickness and osmotic pressure of
reversible supramolecular polymer chains into generalized free-volume theory,
recently developed for investigating the phase behaviour of colloidal spheres
mixed with interacting polymers [Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 143 (2008) 1-47].
It follows that the fluidfluid phase stability region where reversible
supramolecular polymer chains can be mixed with nanospheres is sensitive to the
energy of scission between the monomers and to the nanoparticle radius. One can
then expect the fluidfluid coexistence curves to have a strong dependence on
temperature and that shifting of phase boundaries within a single experimental
system should be possible by varying the temperature. The calculations reveal
the width of the stability region to be rather small. This implies that phase
homogeneity of product formulations containing reversible supramolecular
polymers is only possible at low nanoparticle concentrations.
