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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
Experimental observation of fractionated crystallization in polydisperse platelike colloids
D V Byelov1, M C D Mourad, I Snigireva
1Van't Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. dbyelov@gmail.com
Abstract:
We have discovered that the long-term aging of the hexagonal columnar liquid-crystal phase of polydisperse gibbsite platelets leads to fractionated crystallization, that is, to the formation of coexisting columnar crystals with different periods. This process was revealed by microradian X-ray diffraction demonstrating the splitting of the Bragg intercolumnar reflections into sequences of sharper reflections. The fractionated crystallization was observed in a number of samples of sterically stabilized as well as charge-stabilized polydisperse gibbsite platelets.
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