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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
Turbidity and critical behavior of a colloid-polymer system
B H Chen1, B Payandeh, M Robert
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.
Abstract:
The osmotic compressibility and correlation length of a colloid-polymer system, consisting of grafted silica particles in cyclohexane in the presence of the soluble polymer polydimethylsiloxane, are determined by turbidity measurements in the entire one-phase liquid region, with emphasis on the critical region. The renormalized critical exponents of the osmotic compressibility and the correlation length are found to be respectively gamma(*)=1.39+/-0.01 and nu(*)=0.71+/-0.01, while the amplitude of the correlation length is 16.0+/-0.3 nm. Comparison is made with theoretical predictions.
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