Related papers: Attractive interaction and bridging transition bet…
The electrostatic interaction between two non-identical, moderately charged colloids situated in close proximity of each other at a fluid interface is studied. By resorting to a well-justified model system, this problem is analytically…
The theory of elastic interaction of micron size axially symmetric colloidal particles immersed into confined nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. General formulas are obtained for the self energy of one colloidal particle and…
We report simulations on the homogeneous liquid-fcc nucleation of charged colloids for both low and high contact energy values. As a precursor for crystal formation, we observe increased local order at the position where the crystal will…
The dynamical arrest of attractive colloidal particles into out-of-equilibrium structures, known as gelation, is central to biophysics, materials science, nanotechnology, and food and cosmetic applications, but a complete understanding is…
Performing light scattering experiments we show that introducing short-ranged attraction to a colloidal suspension of nearly hard spheres by addition of free polymer produces new glass transition phenomena. We observe a dramatic…
In this article, we demonstrate a method for inducing reversible crystal-to-crystal transitions in binary mixtures of soft colloidal particles. Through a controlled decrease of salinity and increasingly dominating electrostatic…
We theoretically study the polarizability and the interactions of neutral complexes consisting of a semi-flexible polyelectrolyte adsorbed onto an oppositely charged spherical colloid. In the systems we studied, the bending energy of the…
Using computer simulations, we identify the mechanisms causing aggregation and structural arrest of colloidal suspensions interacting with a short-ranged attraction at moderate and high densities. Two different non-ergodicity transitions…
A theoretical study of the structure formation observed very recently [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 128303 (2003)] in binary colloids is presented. In our model solely the dipole-dipole interaction of the particles is considered,…
We investigate phase separation including elastic coherency effects in the bulk and at surfaces and find a reduction of the solubility limit in the presence of free surfaces. This mechanism favours phase separation near free surfaces even…
Colloids immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces (CCFs) because they confine its concentration fluctuations and influence the latter via effective surface fields. To date, CCFs have only been…
When a mixture is confined, one of the phases can condense out. This condensate, which is otherwise metastable in the bulk, is stabilized by the presence of surfaces. In a sphere-plane geometry, routinely used in atomic force microscope…
Percolation and critical phenomena show common features such as scaling and universality. Colloidal particles, immersed in a solvent close to criticality, experience long-range effective forces, named critical Casimir forces. %These…
In this paper, we discuss microscopic models for chiral active particles, i.e., rotating active units that exhibit circular or spinning motion. While non-chiral active particles are typically governed by self-propulsion and conservative…
Melting is often understood in purely equilibrium terms, where crystalline order disappears once the free energy of the solid equals that of the liquid. Yet at the microscopic level, the initiating events for melting can often be traced to…
The deposition of particles on a substrate by drying a colloidal suspension droplet is at the core of applications ranging from traditional printing on paper to printable electronics or photovoltaic devices. The self-pinning induced by the…
We explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter as a function of temperature and baryon number density, using a class of models for two-flavor QCD in which the interaction between quarks is modelled by that induced by…
The influence of an external field acting differently on the two constituents of a binary colloidal mixture performing Brownian dynamics is investigated by computer simulations and a simple theory. In our model, one half of the particles…
We study the effect of solvent granularity on the effective force between two charged colloidal particles by computer simulations of the primitive model of strongly asymmetric electrolytes with an explicitly added hard sphere solvent. Apart…
We consider an ensemble of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a near-critical solvent such as a binary liquid mixture close to its critical demixing point. The emerging long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter of…