Colloidal interactions in two-dimensional nematic emulsions

We review theoretical and experimental work on colloidal interactions in two-dimensional (2D) nematic emulsions. We pay particular attention to the effects of (i) the nematic elastic constants, (ii) the size of the colloids, and (iii) the boundary conditions at the particles and the container. We consider the interactions between colloids and fluid (deformable) interfaces and the shape of fluid colloids in smectic-C films.     

Dynamics, rectification, and fractionation for colloids on flashing substrates

We show that a rich variety of dynamic phases can be realized for mono- and bidisperse mixtures of interacting colloids under the influence of a symmetric flashing periodic substrate. With the addition of dc or ac drives, phase locking, jamming, and new types of ratchet effects occur. In some regimes we find that the addition of a nonratcheting species increases the velocity of the ratcheting particles. We show that these effects occur due to the collective interactions of the colloids.     

Effect of electric field on light scattering by aqueous colloids of diamond and graphite

We present the results of our experimental investigation of light scattering by polydisperse colloids of diamond and graphite. The scattering is studied at a random orientation of particles and in an external radiofrequency electric field, which orients particles along the strength. The average dimensions of particles in both colloids are close to each other and comparable with the wavelength of the incident light. The shape of particles and the optical and electrooptical properties of diamond and graphite colloids are significantly different. We analyze the polarization components of scattered light energy when the light incident on the colloids is linearly polarized. We show that the quadrupole light scattering by isotropic diamond particles has the main effect on angular dependences of depolarization of scattered light. For light scattering by anisotropic graphite particles, the depolarization of scattered light is mainly determined by a particular feature of the dipole scattering of particles. It is shown that, in both colloids, the orientational order of particles considerably reduces the depolarization of light scattered by particles. We show that relative changes in the intensity and depolarization of scattered light, which depend on the scattering angle and polarization direction of light, as well as on the parameters of particles, can be used as a measure of electrooptical effects observed in colloids.     

Demixing and nematic behaviour of oblate hard spherocylinders and hard spheres mixtures: Monte Carlo simulation and Parsons–Lee theory

Parsons–Lee approach is formulated for the isotropic–nematic transition in a binary mixture of oblate hard spherocylinders and hard spheres. Results for the phase coexistence and for the equation of state in both phases for fluids with different relative size and composition ranges are presented. The predicted behaviour is in agreement with Monte Carlo simulations in a qualitative fashion. The study serves to provide a rational view of how to control key aspects of the behaviour of these binary nematogenic colloidal systems. This behaviour can be tuned with an appropriate choice of the relative size and molar fractions of the depleting particles. In general, the mixture of discotic and spherical particles is stable against demixing up to very high packing fractions. We explore in detail the narrow geometrical range where demixing is predicted to be possible in the isotropic phase. The influence of molecular crowding effects on the stability of the mixture when spherical molecules are added to a system of discotic colloids is also studied.     

微波加热法快速制备纳米银及其SERS活性研究

将一定浓度的硝酸银及柠檬酸三钠混合后,用微波加热法根据加热时间及加热方式的不同,制备出了5个纳米银溶胶样品.用电泳仪、吸收光谱、透射电镜对这5个样品进行了表征,发现加热时间短时,纳米银表面带正电,加热时间长时纳米银表面带负电,且加热时间长时吸收峰红移,纳米银尺寸增大.为测试该纳米银溶胶是否具有表面增强喇曼散射 (SERS)活性,选用了阳离子型分子碱性品红（Fuchsine basic ）、亚甲基蓝（Methylene blue）,阴离子型分子苯甲酸（Benzoic acid）,中性分子丫啶橙(Alcidine orange)、苏丹红(Sudan red)作为其SERS活性的测试分子,进行SERS研究.结果发现,所制备的纳米银除样品5对苏丹红分子无增强效应外,其余样品对所选分子都具有较好的增强效果.     

Diffusion of colloidal particles in swimming suspensions

Previously, we have proposed to analyse the hydrodynamic interactions in a suspension of swimmers with respect to an effective hydrodynamic diffusion coefficient, which only considers the fluctuating motion caused by the stirring of the fluid. In this work, we study the diffusion of colloidal particles immersed in a bath of swimmers. To accurately resolve the many-body hydrodynamic interactions responsible for this diffusion, we use a direct numerical simulation scheme based on the smooth profile method. We consider a squirmer model for the self-propelled swimmers, as it accurately reproduces the flow field generated by real microorganisms, such as bacteria or spermatozoa. We show that the diffusion coefficients of the colloids are comparable with the effective diffusion coefficients of the swimmers, provided that the concentration of swimmers is high enough. At low concentrations, the difference in the way colloids and swimmers react to the flow leads to a reduction in the diffusion coefficient of the colloids. This is clearly seen in the appearance of a negative-correlation region for the velocity-correlation function of the colloids, which does not exist for the swimmers.     

Colloidal particles at fluid interfaces: Effective interactions, dynamics and a gravitation–like instability

Colloidal particles of micrometer size usually become irreversibly trapped at fluid interfaces if they are partially wetted by one phase. This opens the chance to create two–dimensional model systems where the effective interactions between the particles are possibly influenced by the presence of the interface to a great extent. We will review recent developments in the quantitive understanding of these effective interactions with a special emphasis on electrostatics and capillarity. Charged colloids of micrometer size at an interface form effective dipoles whose strength sensitively depends on the double layer structure. We discuss the success of modified Poisson–Boltzmann equations with regard to measured colloidal dipole moments. On the other hand, for somewhat larger particles capillary interactions arise which are long–ranged and analogous to two–dimensional screened Newtonian gravity with the capillary length λ as the screening length. For colloidal diameters of around 10 micrometer, the collective effect of these long–ranged capillary interactions will dominate thermal motion and residual, short–ranged repulsions, and results in an instability towards a collapsed state for a finite patch of particles. Such long–ranged interactions with the associated instability are also of interest in other branches of physics, such as self-gravitating fluids in cosmology, two–dimensional vortex flow in hydrodynamics, and bacterial chemotaxis in biology. Starting from the colloidal case we develop and discuss a dynamical “phase diagram” in the temperature and interaction range variables which appears to be of more general scope and applicable also to other systems.     

Patterned colloidal deposition controlled by electrostatic and capillary forces

We use substrates chemically micropatterned with anionic and cationic regions to govern the deposition of charged colloidal particles. The direct observation of the colloidal assembly suggests that this process includes two steps: an initial patterned attachment of colloids to the substrate and an additional ordering of the structure upon drying. The driving forces of the process, i.e. , screened electrostatic and lateral capillary interactions, are discussed. This approach makes it possible to fabricate complex, high-resolution two-dimensional arrays of colloidal particles.     

A multi-species lattice-gas automaton model to study passive and reactive tracer migration in 2D fractures

We developed a numerical model based on a multi-species lattice gas cellular automaton to study passive and reactive tracer migration in saturated geological media. The model was made of multiple lattice gases interacting via a two-species collision rule. For a binary mixture, the model displayed a negative deviation from Raoult's law and therefore behaved as a real solution. By biasing the initial two-species collision rule, our model was made to obey the tracer assumption which requires that the tracer species does not affect the velocity of the vehicle fluid. In a 2D fracture, we checked the Taylor-Aris relation. An irreversible adsorption between the tracer and the solid phase was numerically added to perform filtration of the colloids. A good agreement was found with the solution of the filtration equation. An attachment efficiency was defined and was found to bear a linear relationship to the filtration coefficient. We added a third species to study the potential role of colloids in the transport of contaminants. Contaminant migration was enhanced when contaminants were bound to colloids and was slightly reduced when colloids were allowed to adsorb on the solid phase. Received 14 January 1999 and Received in final form 8 June 1999     

Nonuniversal routes to universality: critical phenomena in colloidal dispersions

We investigate critical phenomena in colloids by means of the renormalization-group based hierarchical reference theory of fluids. We focus on three experimentally relevant model systems: namely, the Asakura-Oosawa model of a colloidal dispersion under the influence of polymer-induced attractive depletion forces; fluids with competing short-range attractive and longer-range repulsive interactions; solutions of star polymers whose pair potential presents both an attractive well and an ultrasoft repulsion at shorter distance. Our results show that the ability to tune the effective interactions between colloidal particles allows one to generate a variety of crossovers to the asymptotic critical behavior, which are not observed in atomic fluids.     

Magnetic properties of solidified ferrocolloids

Experimental and theoretical investigations are made of the magnetization of solidified dielectric colloids prepared using single-domain magnetite particles with randomly oriented axes of easy magnetization. A method is proposed to calculate the magnetization curves with allowance for blocking of the magnetic moments of particles and magnetic-dipole interparticle interactions. It is shown that magnetic colloids with an extremely low remanent magnetization (a few tens of amps per meter) may be obtained. Fiz. Tverd. Tela (St. Petersburg) 40, 1062–1067 (June 1998)     

Manipulating the self assembly of colloids in electric fields

During the last decade the focus in colloid science on self-assembly has moved from mostly spherical particles and interaction potentials to more and more complex particle shapes, interactions and conditions. In this minireview we focus on how external electric fields, which in almost all cases can be replaced by magnetic particles and fields for similar effects, are used to manipulate the self-assembly process of ever more complex colloids. We will illustrate typical results from literature next to examples of our own work on how electric fields are used to achieve a broad range of different effects guiding the self-assembly of colloidal dispersions. In addition, preliminary measurements and calculations on how electric fields can be used to induce lock-and-key interactions will be presented as well.     

蒽、苝和1-氨基蒽醌水溶胶的制备及其荧光性能的研究

用再沉淀法分别制备了蒽、苝和1-氨基蒽醌水溶胶,研究了三者在水溶液中的荧光光谱,通过与其对应的分子荧光光谱比较,发现蒽和苝的水溶胶荧光光谱发生了红移,而1-氨基蒽醌分子从无荧光到它的水溶胶有荧光的转变,根据荧光和分子结构关系,得出3种溶胶是通过分子之间相互重叠聚集而成。同时因为他们为平面型分子,因此π电子共轭度大,使得荧光容易激发和发射,荧光光谱向长波方向移动。     

Microscopic relationship between colloid–colloid interactions and the rheological behaviour of suspensions: a molecular dynamics-stochastic rotation dynamics investigation

ABSTRACT

We investigate the dependence of the shear viscosity of suspensions of spherical colloids as a function of the volume fraction of the suspension, the colloid–colloid interactions and the shear rate. We couple molecular dynamics to describe the motion of the colloids with stochastic rotation dynamics (MD–SRD) for the fluid environment by means of stochastic collisions, in order to incorporate hydrodynamics effects leading to non-newtonian responses. The shear viscosity is computed using non-equilibrium simulations by imposing explicit velocity gradients. The impact of the colloid–colloid interactions is examined by modelling the inter-colloid pair potential with a repulsive power law, that allows interpolating different degrees of colloidal softness. The general rheological behaviour of our suspensions can be described with a Krieger–Dougherty like equation, which must be corrected to account for the variations in the maximum packing fraction and non-equilibrium effects arising from the flux of momentum imposed to the suspension, which appear when varying the softness of the inter-colloidal interactions. We further show evidence for non-newtonian behaviour at high Péclet numbers, characterised both by shear thinning and shear thickening, and thus demonstrate these effects can be successfully captured using MD–SRD methods.     

Debye-Hückel theory for interfacial geometries

The Debye-Hückel theory for bulk electrolyte solutions is generalized to planar interfacial geometries, including screening effects due to mobile salt ions which are confined to the interface and solutions with in general different salt concentrations and dielectric constants on the two sides of the interface. We calculate the general Debye-Hückel interaction between fixed test charges, and analyze a number of relevant special cases as applicable to charged colloids and charged polymers. Salty interfaces, which are experimentally realized by monolayers or bilayers made of cationic and anionic surfactants or lipids, exert a strong attraction on charged particles of either sign at large separations from the interface; at short distances image-charge repulsion sets in. Likewise, the effective interactions between charged particles are strongly modified in the neighborhood of such a salty interface. On the other hand, charged particles which are immersed in a salt solution are repelled from the air (or a substrate) interface, and the interaction between two charges decays algebraically close to such an interface. These general results have experimentally measurable consequences for the adsorption of charged colloids or charged polymers at monolayers, solid substrates, and interfaces.     

The configurational space of colloidal patchy polymers with heterogeneous sequences

In this work we characterize the configurational space of a short chain of colloidal particles as a function of the range of directional and heterogeneous isotropic interactions. The individual particles forming the chain are colloids decorated with patches that act as interaction sites between them. We show, using computer simulations, that it is possible to sample the relative probability of occurrence of a structure with a sequence in the space of all possible realizations of the chain. The results presented here represent a first attempt to map the space of possible configurations that a chain of colloidal particles may adopt. Knowledge of such a space is crucial for a possible application of colloidal chains as models for designable self-assembling systems.     

Aggregation kinetics in a model colloidal suspension

We present molecular dynamics simulations of aggregation kinetics in a colloidal suspension modeled as a highly asymmetric binary mixture. Starting from a configuration with largely uncorrelated colloidal particles the system relaxes by coagulation-fragmentation dynamics to a structured state of low-dimensionality clusters with an exponential size distribution. The results show that short-range repulsive interactions alone can give rise to so-called cluster phases. For the present model and probably other, more common colloids, the observed clusters appear to be equilibrium phase fluctuations induced by the entropic intercolloidal attractions.     

结晶紫的表面增强共振拉曼光谱和银胶浓度的关系

常用的银胶一般浓度较低且不稳定,这就限制了它在表面增强共振拉曼谱(SERRS)中的应用,本文旨在探讨一种容易制备,浓度高而且特别稳定的银胶在增强结晶紫(CV)SERRS讯号方面的应用,对一定浓度的CV,我们发现只有配合适当浓度的银胶才能获得最强的SERRS的信号,这个现象是由于稳定剂(PVP)在银颗粒表面的作用造成的。     

Ultrasoft colloid-polymer mixtures: structure and phase diagram

Binary mixtures of ultrasoft colloids and linear polymer chains were investigated by small-angle neutron scattering and liquid state theory. We show that experimental data can be described by employing recently developed effective interactions between the colloid and the polymer chains, in which both components are modeled as point particles in a coarse-grained approach, in which the monomers have been traced out. Quantitative, parameter-free agreement between experiment and theory for the pair correlations, the phase behavior and the concentration dependence of the interaction length is achieved.