Three-body interactions in colloidal systems
Soft Condensed Matter
2008-01-28 v1
Abstract
We present the first direct measurement of three-body interactions in a colloidal system comprised of three charged colloidal particles. Two of the particles have been confined by means of a scanned laser tweezers to a line-shaped optical trap where they diffused due to thermal fluctuations. Upon the approach of a third particle, attractive three-body interactions have been observed. The results are in qualitative agreement with additionally performed nonlinear Poissson-Boltzmann calculations, which also allow us to investigate the microionic density distributions in the neighborhood of the interacting colloidal particles.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.3922,
title = {Three-body interactions in colloidal systems},
author = {J. Dobnikar and M. Brunner and H. H. von Grünberg and C. Bechinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.3922},
year = {2008}
}