The equilibrium intrinsic crystal-liquid interface of colloids

Abstract

We use confocal microscopy to study an equilibrated crystal-liquid interface in a colloidal suspension. Capillary waves roughen the surface, but locally the intrinsic interface is sharply defined. We use local measurements of the structure and dynamics to characterize the intrinsic interface, and different measurements find slightly different widths of this interface. In terms of the particle diameter $d$, this width is either $1.5d$ (based on structural information) or $2.4d$ (based on dynamics), both not much larger than the particle size. This work is the first direct experimental visualization of an equilibrated crystal-liquid interface.

6 pages; revised version, submitted to PNAS

References in corpus (3)

• Properties of cage rearrangements observed near the colloidal glass transition
• Re-entrant melting and freezing in a model system of charged colloids
• Profile and width of rough interfaces

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