Related papers: Surface-charge-induced freezing of colloidal suspe…
Recent measurements suggest the possibility to exploit ionic liquids (ILs) as smart lubricants for nano-contacts, tuning their tribological and rheological properties by charging the sliding interfaces. Following our earlier theoretical…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of a colloidal solution in contact with a soft interface. As a result of symmetry breaking, surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. In this Letter, particular…
Freezing is a fundamental physical phenomenon that has been studied over many decades; yet the role played by surfaces in determining nucleation has remained elusive. Here we report direct computational evidence of surface induced…
When a suspension freezes, a compacted particle layer builds up at the solidification front with noticeable implications on the freezing process. In a directional solidification experiment of monodispersed suspensions in thin samples, we…
We investigate with Monte Carlo computer simulations the capillary phase behaviour of model colloid-polymer mixtures confined between a flat wall and a corrugated wall. The corrugation is modelled via a sine wave as a function of one of the…
Suspensions of hard colloidal particles frequently serve as model systems in studies on fundamental aspects of phase transitions. But often colloidal particles that are considered as ``hard'' are in fact weakly charged. If the colloids are…
The structures of the liquid surface and the liquid-solid interface of sodium have been characterized with extensive first-principles molecular dynamics simulations. Friedel oscillations in the electronic charge density at the free surface…
The effect of rough walls on the phase behaviour of a confined liquid crystal (LC) fluid is studied using constant pressure Monte Carlo simulations. The LC is modelled as a fluid of soft ellipsoidal molecules and the rough walls are…
Within a general framework we study the effective, deformation-induced interaction between two colloids trapped at a fluid interface. As an application, we consider the interface deformation owing to the electrostatic field of charged…
Thermodynamic properties of charge-stabilised colloidal suspensions depend sensitively on the effective charge of the macroions, which can be substantially lower than the bare charge in the case of strong counterion-macroion association. A…
Thermally induced particle flow in a charged colloidal suspension is studied in a fluid-mechanical approach. The force density acting on the charged boundary layer is derived in detail. From Stokes' equation with no-slip boundary conditions…
The nature of freezing and melting transitions for a system of model colloids interacting by a DLVO potential in a spatially periodic external potential is studied using extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Detailed finite size scaling…
The effect of surface roughness on the structure of liquid crystalline fluids near solid substrates is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The liquid crystal is modelled as a fluid of soft ellipsoidal molecules and the substrate is modelled…
We have performed confocal microscopy experiments and computer simulations of colloidal suspensions with moderate volume fraction confined between two quasi-parallel, rough walls [A. Villada-Balbuena et al., Soft Matter, 2022, 18,…
Charge-stabilized colloidal spheres dispersed in weak 1:1 electrolytes are supposed to repel each other. Consequently, experimental evidence for anomalous long-ranged like-charged attractions induced by geometric confinement inspired a…
The wetting of a charged wedge-like wall by an electrolyte solution is investigated by means of classical density functional theory. As in other studies on wedge wetting, this geometry is considered as the most simple deviation from a…
We study the effective interaction mediated by strongly coupled Coulomb fluids between dielectric surfaces carrying quenched, random monopolar charges with equal mean and variance, both when the Coulomb fluid consists only of mobile…
We explore the effects of counterion condensation on fluid-fluid phase separation in charged colloidal suspensions. It is found that formation of double layers around the colloidal particles stabilizes suspensions against phase separation.…
We analyse a binary mixture of colloidal parallel hard cylindrical particles with identical diameters but dissimilar lengths $L_1$ and $L_2$, with $s=L_2/L_1=3$, confined by two parallel hard walls in a planar slit-pore geometry, using a…
We studied the phase behavior of charged and sterically stabilized colloids using confocal microscopy in a less polar solvent (dielectric constant 5.4). Upon increasing the colloid volume fraction we found a transition from a fluid to a…