Related papers: Electrostatics and aggregation: how charge can tur…
We study gelation in suspensions of model colloidal particles with short-ranged attractive and long-ranged repulsive interactions by means of three-dimensional fluorescence confocal microscopy. At low packing fractions, particles form…
The binding of clusters of metal nanoparticles is partly electrostatic. We address difficulties in calculating the electrostatic energy when high charging energies limit the total charge to a single quantum, entailing unequal potentials on…
The functionalities and applications of complex coacervates -- liquid condensates resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation of charged polymers -- are significantly influenced by the dispersion and aggregation states of guest…
Charged soft-matter systems--such as colloidal dispersions and charged polymers--are dominated by attractive forces between constituent like-charged particles when neutralizing counterions of high charge valency are introduced. Such…
The possibility for proteins to aggregate in different superstructures, i.e. large-scale polymorphism, has been widely observed, but an understanding of the physico-chemical mechanisms behind it is still out of reach. Here we present a…
Attractive colloidal particles can form a disordered elastic solid or gel when quenched into a two-phase region, if the volume fraction is sufficiently large. When the interactions are comparable to thermal energies the stress-bearing…
Collisional growth of tiny particles is a fundamental process governing the growth of cloud droplets and the aggregation of ash particles in volcanic plumes, with direct implications for precipitation formation, cloud lifetime, and ash…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
The interfacial free energy is a central quantity in crystallization from the meta-stable melt. In suspensions of charged colloidal spheres, nucleation and growth kinetics can be accurately measured from optical experiments. In previous…
Complexation in symmetric solutions of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is studied theoretically. We include polyion crosslinking due to formation of thermoreversible ionic pairs. The electrostatic free energy is calculated within the…
Curved textures of ferroelectric smectic C* liquid crystals produce space charge when they involve divergence of the spontaneous polarization field. Impurity ions can partially screen this space charge, reducing long range interactions to…
The formation of colloidal gels is strongly dependent on the volume fraction of the system and the strength of the interactions between the colloids. Here we explore very dilute solutions by the means of numerical simulations, and show…
Electrostatic correlations play an important role in physics, chemistry and biology. In plasmas they lead to thermodynamic instability similar to the liquid-gas phase transition of simple molecular fluids. For charged colloidal suspensions…
We report the formation of colloidal complexes resulting from the electrostatic co-assembly between anionic surfactants and cationic polyelectrolytes or block copolymers. Combining light and x-ray scattering experiments with cryogenic…
Accumulation of particles while flowing past constrictions is a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in diverse systems. Some of the common examples are jamming of salt crystals near the orifice of salt shakers, clogging of filter systems,…
We investigate numerically and on the scaling level the adsorption of a charged colloid on an oppositely charged flexible membrane. We show that the long ranged character of the electrostatic interaction leads to a wrapping reentrance of…
By using the generalized version of the Shell Theorem analytical equations are derived to calculate the electric energy of a charged sphere and the field energy of the electrolyte inside and around the sphere. These electric energies are…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
Electrostatic repulsions can drive crystallization in many-particle systems. For charged colloidal systems, the phase boundaries as well as crystal structure are highly tunable by experimental parameters such as salt concentration and pH.…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…