Related papers: Electrostatics and aggregation: how charge can tur…
This article reviews the static and dynamic properties of spontaneous superstructures formed by electrons. Representations of such electronic crystals are charge density waves and spin density waves in inorganic as well as organic low…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
We use a shell model to study the counterion interactions in a colloidal solution. In this shell model, the counterions are restricted to move inside a spherical region about their host colloidal particle. In particular, we apply Monte…
We study the kinetics of the liquid-to-crystal transformation and of gel formation in colloidal suspensions of oppositely charged particles. We analyse, by means of both computer simulations and experiments, the evolution of a fluid…
A highly-charged spherical colloid in a salt-free environment exerts such a powerful attraction on its counterions that a certain fraction condenses onto the surface of a particle. The degree of condensation depends on the curvature of the…
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…
This theoretical and numerical study investigates the impact of electrostatic stresses on the shape of charged water structures (grains) in weakly ionized plasmas. We developed an analytic model to predict the conditions under which a grain…
Electrostatic interactions make a large contribution to solvation free energy in ionic fluids such as electrolytes and colloidal dispersions. The electrostatic contribution to solvation free energy has been ascribed to the self-energy of a…
It has been shown that to calculate the parameters of the electrostatic field of the ion crystal lattice it sufficient to take into account ions located at a distance of 1-2 lattice spacings. More distant ions make insignificant…
Colloids that interact via a short-range attraction serve as the primary building blocks for a broad range of self-assembled materials. However, one of the well-known drawbacks to this strategy is that these building blocks rapidly and…
Electrostatic interactions provide a convenient way to modulate interactions between nanoparticles, colloids, and biomolecules because they can be adjusted by the solution pH or salt concentration. While the presence of salt provides an…
In titration experiments with NaOH we have determined the full phase diagram of charged colloidal spheres in dependence on the particle density n, the particle effective charge Zeff and the concentration of screening electrolyte c using…
Electrostatic interactions play an important role in numerous self-assembly phenomena, including colloidal aggregation. Although colloids typically have a dielectric constant that differs from the surrounding solvent, the effective…
We investigate electrostatic stability of charged droplets, modeled as permeable, charged spheres, and their encapsidation in thin, arbitrarily charged nano-shells, immersed in a neutralizing asymmetric electrolyte background. The latter…
Charge-stabilized colloidal spheres dispersed in deionized water are supposed to repel each other. Instead, artifact-corrected video microscopy measurements reveal an anomalous long-ranged like-charge attraction in the interparticle pair…
The empirical observation of aggregation of dielectric particles under the influence of electrostatic forces lies at the origin of the theory of electricity. The growth of clusters formed of small grains underpins a range of phenomena from…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
Electrostatics plays a key role in biomolecular assembly. Oppositely charged biomolecules, for instance, can co-assembled into functional units, such as DNA and histone proteins into nucleosomes and actin-binding protein complexes into…
The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by…
Attractive colloids diffuse and aggregate to form gels, solid-like particle networks suspended in a fluid. Gravity is known to strongly impact the stability of gels once they are formed. However, its effect on the process of gel formation…