Structures and dynamics of glass-forming colloidal liquids under spherical confinement

Abstract

Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of liquid relaxation. The prediction, however, has yet to be verified in 3D experiments. Here, we design a colloidal system, where particles are confined inside spherical cavities with an amorphous layer of particles pinned at the boundary. Using this novel system, we capture the amorphous-order particle clusters and demonstrate the development of a static correlation. Moreover, by investigating the dynamics of spherically confined samples, we reveal a profound influence of the static correlation on the relaxation of colloidal liquids. In analogy to glass-forming liquids with randomly pinned particles, we propose a simple relation for the change of the configurational entropy of confined colloidal liquids, which quantitatively explains our experimental findings and illustrates a divergent static length scale during the colloidal glass transition.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Theoretical perspective on the glass transition and amorphous materials
• Layering and position-dependent diffusive dynamics of confined fluids
• Direct measurements of growing amorphous order and non-monotonic dynamic correlations in a colloidal glass-former
• Equilibrium phase diagram of a randomly pinned glass-former
• Does confining the hard-sphere fluid between hard walls change its average properties?
• Tuning the fragility of a glassforming liquid by curving space
• Boundary mobility controls glassiness of confined colloidal liquids

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Colloidal Hard Spheres: Triumphs, Challenges and Mysteries
• An introduction to the colloidal glass transition
• Deconstructing the glass transition through critical experiments on colloids
• Glass Transition in Supercooled Liquids with Medium Range Crystalline Order
• Understanding the Dynamics of Glass-forming Liquids with Random Pinning within the Random First Order Transition Theory
• Block Analysis for the Calculation of Dynamic and Static Length Scales in Glass-Forming Liquids
• Triple junction at the triple point resolved on the individual particle level
• Diverging time scale in the dimensional crossover for liquids in strong confinement
• Nonergodicity parameters of confined hard-sphere glasses
• Non-monotonic dynamic correlations beneath the surface of glass-forming liquids
• Pinning Susceptibility : A Novel Method to Study Growth of Amorphous Order in Glass-forming Liquids
• Confinement-induced demixing and crystallization
• Dynamical properties of densely packed confined hard-sphere fluids
• Statistical analysis of phase formation in 2D colloidal systems
• Tagged-particle dynamics in confined colloidal liquids
• Computer Simulations and Mode-Coupling Theory of Glass-Forming Confined Hard-Sphere Fluids
• Stirring supercooled colloidal liquids at the particle scale