Related papers: Colloidal glass transition observed in confinement
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…
We consider the sedimentation of a colloidal gel under confinement in the direction of gravity. The confinement allows us to compare directly experiments and computer simulations, for the same system size in the vertical direction. The…
We study colloidal particle dynamics of a model glass system using confocal and fluorescence microscopy as the sample evolves from a hard-sphere glass to a liquid with attractive interparticle interactions. The transition from hard-sphere…
We use confocal microscopy to study the motion of a magnetic bead in a dense colloidal suspension, near the colloidal glass transition volume fraction $\phi_g$. For dense liquid-like samples near $\phi_g$, below a threshold force the…
Structure-dynamics correlation is one of the major ongoing debates in the glass transition, although a number of structural features have been found connected to the dynamic heterogeneity in different glass-forming colloidal systems. Here…
The replica theory of glasses predicts that in the infinite dimensional mean field limit there exist two distinct glassy phases of matter: stable glass and marginal glass. We have developed a technique to experimentally probe these phases…
We present simulation results addressing the phenomena of colloidal gelation induced by attractive interactions. The liquid-gas transition is prevented by the glass arrest at high enough attraction strength, resulting in a colloidal gel.…
We experimentally revisite the flow down an inclined plane of dense granular suspensions, with particles of sizes in the micron range, for which thermal fluctuations cannot be ignored. Using confocal microscopy on a miniaturized set-up, we…
A confined colloidal glass, under the imposition of a uniform shear stress, is investigated using numerical simulations. Both at macro- and microscales, the consequent dynamics during the onset of flow is studied. When the imposed stress is…
In a dense colloidal suspension at a volume fraction slightly lower than that of its glass transition, we follow the trajectories of an assembly of tracers over a large time window. We define a local activity, which quantifies the local…
We present a detailed derivation of a microscopic theory for the glass transition of a liquid enclosed between two parallel walls relying on a mode-coupling approximation. This geometry lacks translational invariance perpendicular to the…
Glass-forming materials are characterized by an intermittent motion at the microscopic scale. Particles spend most of their time rattling within the cages formed by their neighbors, and seldom jump to a different cage. In molecular glass…
We provide a detailed derivation of the mode-coupling equations for a colloidal liquid confined by two parallel smooth walls. We introduce irreducible memory kernels for the different relaxation channels thereby extending the projection…
Colloidal glasses form from hard spheres, nearly hard spheres, ellipsoids and platelets or their attractive variants have been studied in detail. Complementing and checking theoretical approaches and simulations, the many different types of…
Glass is a liquid that has lost its ability to flow. Why this particular substance undergoes its dramatic slowing down in kinetics while remaining barely distinguishable in structure from the fluid state upon cooling constitutes the central…
Within the framework of the mode-coupling theory of super-cooled liquids, we investigate new phenomena in colloidal systems on approach to their glass transitions. When the inter-particle potential contains an attractive part, besides the…
When two solid surfaces are brought in contact, water vapor present in the ambient air may condense in the region of the contact to form a liquid bridge connecting the two surfaces : this is the so-called capillary condensation. This…
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…
The key parameter controlling the glass transition of colloidal suspensions is $\varphi$, the fraction of the sample volume occupied by the particles. Unfortunately, changing $\varphi$ by varying an external parameter, \textit{e.g.}…
We theoretically investigate the glass-transition problem for a quasi-two-dimensional colloidal dense suspension modulated by a one-dimensional periodic external potential as imposed by interfering laser beams. Relying on a mode-coupling…