scholarly journals Size-dependent thermodynamic structural selection in colloidal crystallization

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. eaaw5912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Pretti ◽  
Hasan Zerze ◽  
Minseok Song ◽  
Yajun Ding ◽  
Runfang Mao ◽  
...  

Nucleation and growth of crystalline phases play an important role in a variety of physical phenomena, ranging from freezing of liquids to assembly of colloidal particles. Understanding these processes in the context of colloidal crystallization is of great importance for predicting and controlling the structures produced. In many systems, crystallites that nucleate have structures differing from those expected from bulk equilibrium thermodynamic considerations, and this is often attributed to kinetic effects. In this work, we consider the self-assembly of a binary mixture of colloids in two dimensions, which exhibits a structural transformation from a non–close-packed to a close-packed lattice during crystal growth. We show that this transformation is thermodynamically driven, resulting from size dependence of the relative free energy between the two structures. We demonstrate that structural selection can be entirely thermodynamic, in contrast to previously considered effects involving growth kinetics or interaction with the surrounding fluid phase.

Langmuir ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2975-2978 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariko Yamaki ◽  
Junichi Higo ◽  
Kuniaki Nagayama

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 104105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günther Doppelbauer ◽  
Emanuela Bianchi ◽  
Gerhard Kahl

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (20) ◽  
pp. E3892-E3899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chrisy Xiyu Du ◽  
Greg van Anders ◽  
Richmond S. Newman ◽  
Sharon C. Glotzer

Solid–solid phase transitions are the most ubiquitous in nature, and many technologies rely on them. However, studying them in detail is difficult because of the extreme conditions (high pressure/temperature) under which many such transitions occur and the high-resolution equipment needed to capture the intermediate states of the transformations. These difficulties mean that basic questions remain unanswered, such as whether so-called diffusionless solid–solid transitions, which have only local particle rearrangement, require thermal activation. Here, we introduce a family of minimal model systems that exhibits solid–solid phase transitions that are driven by changes in the shape of colloidal particles. By using particle shape as the control variable, we entropically reshape the coordination polyhedra of the particles in the system, a change that occurs indirectly in atomic solid–solid phase transitions via changes in temperature, pressure, or density. We carry out a detailed investigation of the thermodynamics of a series of isochoric, diffusionless solid–solid phase transitions within a single shape family and find both transitions that require thermal activation or are “discontinuous” and transitions that occur without thermal activation or are “continuous.” In the discontinuous case, we find that sufficiently large shape changes can drive reconfiguration on timescales comparable with those for self-assembly and without an intermediate fluid phase, and in the continuous case, solid–solid reconfiguration happens on shorter timescales than self-assembly, providing guidance for developing means of generating reconfigurable colloidal materials.


Langmuir ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (16) ◽  
pp. 6746-6749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Fernández-Toledano ◽  
Arturo Moncho-Jordá ◽  
Francisco Martínez-López ◽  
Roque Hidalgo-Álvarez

Author(s):  
A. S. Sharipov ◽  
◽  
B. I. Loukhovitski ◽  

The size-dependence of different physical properties of atomic clusters (by the example of binding energy, collision diameter, and static isotropic polarizability) is discussed.


1989 ◽  
Vol 177 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Pine ◽  
D. A. Weitz ◽  
D. J. Durian ◽  
P. N. Pusey ◽  
R. J. A. Tough

ABSTRACTOn a short time scale, Brownian particles undergo a transition from initially ballistic trajectories to diffusive motion. Hydrodynamic interactions with the surrounding fluid lead to a complex time dependence of this transition. We directly probe this transition for colloidal particles by measuring the autocorrelation function of multiply scattered light and observe the effects of the slow power-law decay of the velocity autocorrelation function.


2020 ◽  
Vol 146 ◽  
pp. 03004
Author(s):  
Douglas Ruth

The most influential parameter on the behavior of two-component flow in porous media is “wettability”. When wettability is being characterized, the most frequently used parameter is the “contact angle”. When a fluid-drop is placed on a solid surface, in the presence of a second, surrounding fluid, the fluid-fluid surface contacts the solid-surface at an angle that is typically measured through the fluid-drop. If this angle is less than 90°, the fluid in the drop is said to “wet” the surface. If this angle is greater than 90°, the surrounding fluid is said to “wet” the surface. This definition is universally accepted and appears to be scientifically justifiable, at least for a static situation where the solid surface is horizontal. Recently, this concept has been extended to characterize wettability in non-static situations using high-resolution, two-dimensional digital images of multi-component systems. Using simple thought experiments and published experimental results, many of them decades old, it will be demonstrated that contact angles are not primary parameters – their values depend on many other parameters. Using these arguments, it will be demonstrated that contact angles are not the cause of wettability behavior but the effect of wettability behavior and other parameters. The result of this is that the contact angle cannot be used as a primary indicator of wettability except in very restricted situations. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that even for the simple case of a capillary interface in a vertical tube, attempting to use simply a two-dimensional image to determine the contact angle can result in a wide range of measured values. This observation is consistent with some published experimental results. It follows that contact angles measured in two-dimensions cannot be trusted to provide accurate values and these values should not be used to characterize the wettability of the system.


Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Lu ◽  
Xiangyu Bu ◽  
Xinghua Zhang ◽  
Bing Liu

The shapes of colloidal particles are crucial to the self-assembled superstructures. Understanding the relationship between the shapes of building blocks and the resulting crystal structures is an important fundamental question....


1989 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan V. Shih ◽  
Wei-Heng Shih ◽  
Jun Liu ◽  
Ilhan A. Aksay

The stability of a colloidal suspension plays an important role in colloidal processing of materials. The stability of the colloidal fluid phase is especially vital in achieving high green densities. By colloidal fluid phase, we refer to a phase in which colloidal particles are well separated and free to move about by Brownian motion, By controlling parameters such as pH, salt concentration, and surfactants, one can achieve high packing (green) densities in the repulsive regime where the suspension is well dispersed as a colloidal fluid, and low green densities in the attractive regime where the suspensions are flocculated [1,2]. While there is increasing interest in using bimodal suspensions to improve green densities, neither the stability of a binary suspension as a colloidal fluid nor the stability effects on the green densities have been studied in depth as yet. Traditionally, the effect of using bimodal-particle-size distribution has only been considered in terms of geometrical packing developed by Furnas and others [3,4]. This model is a simple packing concept and is used and useful for hard sphere-like repulsive interparticle interactions. With the advances in powder technology, smaller and smaller particles are available for ceramic processing. Thus, the traditional consideration of geometrial packing for the green densities of bimodal suspensions may not be enough. The interaction between particles must be taken into account.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document