Orientationally Glassy Crystals of Janus Spheres
Soft Condensed Matter
2014-06-11 v1 Materials Science
Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
Colloidal Janus spheres in water (one hemisphere attractive and the other repulsive) assemble into two-dimensional hexagonal crystals with orientational order controlled by anisotropic interactions. We exploit the decoupled translational and rotational order to quantify the orientational dynamics. Via imaging experiments and Monte Carlo simulations we demonstrate that the correlations in the orientation of individual Janus spheres exhibit glasslike dynamics that can be controlled via the ionic strength. Thus, these colloidal building blocks provide a particularly suitable model glass system for elucidating nontrivial dynamics arising from directional interactions, not captured by the consideration of just translational order.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.2625,
title = {Orientationally Glassy Crystals of Janus Spheres},
author = {Shan Jiang and Jing Yan and Jonathan K. Whitmer and Stephen M. Anthony and Erik Luijten and Steve Granick},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.2625},
year = {2014}
}