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Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
Effect of the range of attractive interactions on crystallization, metastable phase transition, and percolation in
Dong Fu1, Yigui Li, Jianzhong Wu
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
The equilibrium as well as nonequilibrium phase behaviors of colloidal dispersions have been investigated using statistical-mechanical theories of fluids and solids in complement with the renormalization-group (RG) theory. It is shown that the osmotic second virial coefficient at the critical point of the fluid-fluid transition varies with the range of attractions and is sensitive to specific forms of the attractive potential in contrast to a common speculation that it remains practically constant. However, for colloids with short-ranged forces, the critical temperature of the fluid-fluid phase transition is well correlated with the range of attractions in good agreement with an earlier empirical correlation based on simulation results. A comparison of the relative positions of the fluid-fluid coexistence curve, freezing, melting, and percolation lines in the phase diagram indicates that the gelation in colloidal systems has significant effects on the equilibrium phase transitions and crystallization, especially when the attractions between colloidal particles are short ranged.
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