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Anisotropic elasticity of experimental colloidal Wigner crystals
Emily R Russell1, Frans Spaepen2, David A Weitz1,2
1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
Colloidal particles interacting via a long-range repulsion can, in contrast to hard-sphere systems, exhibit crystalline ordering at low volume fraction. Here we experimentally investigate the structure and properties of such "colloidal Wigner crystals." We find a body-centered-cubic crystalline phase at volume fractions of ϕ≳15%, which exhibits large fluctuations of individual particles from their average positions. We determine the three independent crystalline elastic constants and find that these crystals are very compliant and highly anisotropic.
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