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Updated: Oct 23, 2025

Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
Diffusion, phase behavior, and gelation in a two-dimensional layer of colloids in osmotic equilibrium with a polymer
Sam E Griffiths1, Nick Koumakis1, Aidan T Brown1
1School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymers to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behaviors and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a study of these phenomena in a two-dimensional layer of colloids. The three-dimensional phenomenology of crystal-fluid coexistence is reproduced, but gelation takes a novel form, in which the strands in the gel structure are locally crystalline. We compare our findings with a previous simulation and theory and find substantial agreement.
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