Phase behaviour of concentrated suspensions of nearly hard colloidal spheres Export

@article{pusey86, abstract = {Suspensions of spherical colloidal particles in a liquid show a fascinating variety of phase behaviour which can mimic that of simple atomic liquids and solids. 'Colloidal fluids', in which there are significant short-range correlations between the positions of neighbouring particles, and 'colloidal crystals', which have long-range spatial order, have been investigated extensively. We report here a detailed study of the phase diagram of suspensions of colloidal spheres which interact through a steep repulsive potential. With increasing particle concentration we observed a progression from colloidal fluid, to fluid and crystal phases in coexistence, to fully crystallized samples. At the highest concentrations we obtained very viscous samples in which full crystallization had not occurred after several months an in which the particles appeared to be arranged as an amorphous 'colloidal glass'. The empirical phase diagram can be repoduced reasonably well by an effective hard-sphere model. The observation of the colloidal glass phase is interesting both in itself and because of possible relevance to the manufacture of high-strength ceramics.}, author = {Pusey, P. N. and van Megen, W.}, citeulike-article-id = {301921}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/320340a0}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/320340a0}, doi = {10.1038/320340a0}, journal = {Nature}, keywords = {class-s09, classic, colloids, glass, phase-diagram, pmma}, month = {March}, number = {6060}, pages = {340--342}, posted-at = {2007-09-19 15:14:41}, priority = {0}, title = {Phase behaviour of concentrated suspensions of nearly hard colloidal spheres}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/320340a0}, volume = {320}, year = {1986} }

TY - JOUR ID - pusey86 L3 - citeulike-article-id:301921 N2 - Suspensions of spherical colloidal particles in a liquid show a fascinating variety of phase behaviour which can mimic that of simple atomic liquids and solids. 'Colloidal fluids', in which there are significant short-range correlations between the positions of neighbouring particles, and 'colloidal crystals', which have long-range spatial order, have been investigated extensively. We report here a detailed study of the phase diagram of suspensions of colloidal spheres which interact through a steep repulsive potential. With increasing particle concentration we observed a progression from colloidal fluid, to fluid and crystal phases in coexistence, to fully crystallized samples. At the highest concentrations we obtained very viscous samples in which full crystallization had not occurred after several months an in which the particles appeared to be arranged as an amorphous 'colloidal glass'. The empirical phase diagram can be repoduced reasonably well by an effective hard-sphere model. The observation of the colloidal glass phase is interesting both in itself and because of possible relevance to the manufacture of high-strength ceramics. IS - 6060 JF - Nature EP - 342 TI - Phase behaviour of concentrated suspensions of nearly hard colloidal spheres VL - 320 SP - 340 KW - class-s09 KW - classic KW - colloids KW - glass KW - phase-diagram KW - pmma AU - Pusey, PN AU - van Megen, W PY - 1986/03/27/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/320340a0 ER -