Crystal-to-crystal transition of ultrasoft colloids under shear
Soft Condensed Matter
2018-02-21 v1
Abstract
Ultrasoft colloids typically do not spontaneously crystallize, but rather vitrify, at high concentrations. Combining in-situ rheo-SANS experiments and numerical simulations we show that shear facilitates crystallization of colloidal star polymers in the vicinity of their glass transition. With increasing shear rate well beyond rheological yielding, a transition is found from an initial bcc-dominated structure to an fcc-dominated one. This crystal-to-crystal transition is not accompanied by intermediate melting but occurs via a sudden reorganization of the crystal structure. Our results provide a new avenue to tailor colloidal crystallization and crystal-to-crystal transition at molecular level by coupling softness and shear.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1712.04430,
title = {Crystal-to-crystal transition of ultrasoft colloids under shear},
author = {J. Ruiz-Franco and J. Marakis and N. Gnan and J. Kohlbrecher and M. Gauthier and M. P. Lettinga and D. Vlassopoulos and E. Zaccarelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.04430},
year = {2018}
}