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Simple models based on isotropic interparticle attractions often fail to capture experimentally observed structures of colloidal gels formed through spinodal decomposition and subsequent arrest: the resulting gels are typically denser and less branched than their experimental counterparts. Here we simulate gels formed from soft particles with directional attractions (patchy particles), designed to inhibit lateral particle rearrangement after aggregation. We directly compare simulated structures with experimental colloidal gels made using soft attractive microgel particles, by employing a skeletonization method that reconstructs the 3-dimensional backbone from experiment or simulation. We show that including directional attractions with sufficient valency leads to strongly branched structures compared to isotropic models. Furthermore, combining isotropic and directional attractions provides additional control over aggregation kinetics and gel structure. Our results show that the inhibition of lateral particle rearrangements strongly affects the gel topology, and is an important effect to consider in computational models of colloidal gels.
We image local structural rearrangements in soft colloidal glasses under small periodic perturbations induced by thermal cycling. Local structural entropy $S_{2}$ positively correlates with observed rearrangements in colloidal glasses. The high $S_{2
This paper has been temporarily withdrawn by the authors. We have recently found that noise in the experiments is at the origin of the supposed back-and-forth motion which is discussed in the first version of the paper. As a consequence, figs 4 and 5
We report on a novel and flexible experiment to investigate the non-equilibrium melting behaviour of model crystals made from charged colloidal spheres. In a slit geometry polycrystalline material formed in a low salt region is driven by hydrostatic
We sandwich a colloidal gel between two parallel plates and induce a radial flow by lifting the upper plate at a constant velocity. Two distinct scenarios result from such a tensile test: ($i$) stable flows during which the gel undergoes a tensile de
We use molecular dynamics computer simulations to investigate the relaxation dynamics of a simple model for a colloidal gel at a low volume fraction. We find that due to the presence of the open spanning network this dynamics shows at low temperature