Related papers: Computer Simulation of Gel Formation in Colloidal …
Colloidal gels constitute an important class of materials found in many contexts and with a wide range of applications. Yet as matter far from equilibrium, gels exhibit a variety of time-dependent behaviours, which can be perplexing, such…
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…
We investigate the gel formation from the equilibrium sol phase in a simple model that has the characteristics of (colloidal) gel-forming systems at a finite temperature. At low volume fraction and low temperatures, particles are linked by…
The effects of particle roughness and short-ranged non-central forces on colloidal gels are studied using computer simulations in which particles experience a sinusoidal variation in energy as they rotate. The number of minima $n$ and…
Colloidal gel networks are disordered elastic solids that can form even in extremely dilute particle suspensions. With interaction strengths comparable to the thermal energy, their stress-bearing network can locally restructure via breaking…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
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…
Colloidal gels are widely applied in industry due to their rheological character -- no flow takes place below the yield stress. Such property enables gels to maintain uniform distribution in practical formulations; otherwise, solid…
Attractive colloidal gels exhibit solid-like behavior at vanishingly small fractions of solids, owing to ramified space-spanning networks that form due to particle-particle interactions. These networks give the gel its rigidity, and as the…
Multicomponent gel systems have garnered much interest due to their compelling mechanical properties in the past decade. Yet, some mechanisms associated with multicomponent gels, such as sequential gelation, have been explored primarily in…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
By means of molecular dynamics, we study the structure and the dynamics of a microscopic model for colloidal gels at low volume fractions. The presence of directional interactions leads to the formation of a persistent interconnected…
Colloidal gels are formed through the aggregation of attractive particles, whose size ranges from 10~nm to a few micrometers, suspended in a liquid. Such gels are ubiquitous in everyday life applications, from food products to paints or…
Charged colloidal particles can self-assemble into gel networks upon screening of electrostatic repulsion by added salt. While gelation of spherical colloids has been extensively studied, much less is known about the gelation dynamics of…
Colloidal gels are out of equilibrium soft solids composed of attractive Brownian particles that form a space-spanning network at low volume fractions. The elastic properties of these systems result from the network microstructure, which is…
Computer simulations were used to study the gel transition occurring in colloidal systems with short range attractions. A colloid-polymer mixture was modelled and the results were compared with mode coupling theory expectations and with the…
The competition of depletion attractions and longer-ranged repulsions between colloidal particles in colloid-polymer mixtures leads to the formation of heterogeneous gel-like structures. For instance, gel networks, i.e., states where the…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
Colloidal gels are elasto-plastic materials composed of an out-of-equilibrium, self-assembled network of micron-sized (solid) particles suspended in a fluid. Recent work has shown that far-field hydrodynamic interactions do not change gel…
We combine experiments and simulations to study the link between criticality and gelation in sticky spheres. We employ confocal microscopy to image colloid-polymer mixtures, and Monte Carlo simulations of the square-well (SW) potential as a…