Colloidal gels assembled via a temporary interfacial scaffold
arXiv:0912.1307 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.255502
Abstract
The liquid-liquid phase separation of a binary solvent can be arrested by colloidal particles trapped at the interface [K. Stratford et al., Science 309, 5744 (2005)]. We show experimentally that the colloidal network so formed can remain stable after fully remixing the liquids, creating a new type of gel in which colloids in a single-phase solvent have locally planar coordination. We argue that this structure is likely maintained by primary-minimum DLVO bonding of our charged colloids, created under strong compression by capillary forces. We present simulation evidence that the combination of a short-ranged attraction with a repulsive barrier can strongly stabilize such locally planar gels.
5 pages 4 figures
References in corpus (4)
Cited by in corpus (11)
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