English

Tracer diffusion in colloidal gels

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-03-25 v1

Abstract

Computer simulations were done of the mean square displacement (MSD) of tracer particles in colloidal gels formed by diffusion or reaction limited aggregation of hard spheres. The diffusion coefficient was found to be determined by the volume fraction accessible to the spherical tracers (ϕa\phi_a) independent of the gel structure or the tracer size. In all cases, critical slowing down was observed at ϕa0.03\phi_a\approx 0.03 and was characterized by the same scaling laws reported earlier for tracer diffusion in a Lorentz gas. Strong heterogeneity of the MSD was observed at small ϕa\phi_a and was related to the size distribution of pores.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0705.1266,
  title  = {Tracer diffusion in colloidal gels},
  author = {Sujin Babu and Jean Christophe Gimel and Taco Nicolai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.1266},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T08:26:34.313Z