Criticality and phase separation in a two-dimensional binary colloidal fluid induced by the solvent critical behavior
Soft Condensed Matter
2011-10-03 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phase behavior of a binary mixture of colloids with opposite adsorption preferences in a critical solvent. As a result of the attractive and repulsive critical Casimir forces, the critical fluctuations of the solvent lead to a further critical point in the colloidal system, i.e. to a critical colloidal-liquid--colloidal-liquid demixing phase transition which is controlled by the solvent temperature. Our experimental findings are in good agreement with calculations based on a simple approximation for the free energy of the system.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1108.5966,
title = {Criticality and phase separation in a two-dimensional binary colloidal fluid induced by the solvent critical behavior},
author = {O. Zvyagolskaya and A. J. Archer and C. Bechinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.5966},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
5 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Europhysics Letters