Equilibrium Onions?

Abstract

We demonstrate the possibility of a stable equilibrium multi-lamellar (``onion'') phase in pure lamellar systems (no excess solvent) due to a sufficiently negative Gaussian curvature modulus. The onion phase is stabilized by non-linear elastic moduli coupled to a polydisperse size distribution (Apollonian packing) to allow space-filling without appreciable elastic distortion. This model is compared to experiments on copolymer-decorated lamellar surfactant systems, with reasonable qualitative agreement.

References in corpus (2)

• Optimal packing of polydisperse hard-sphere fluids
• Continuous phase transition in polydisperse hard-sphere mixture

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Slow dynamics in glassy soft matter
• Onion structures induced by hydrophilic and hydrophobic ions in a binary mixture
• Intrinsic aging and effective viscosity in the slow dynamics of a soft glass with tunable elasticity
• Origin of the slow dynamics and the aging of a soft glass
• Elasticity of smectic liquid crystals with focal conic domains
• Direct-space investigation of the ultraslow ballistic dynamics of a soft glass
• Rheology of Lamellar Liquid Crystals in Two and Three Dimensions: A Simulation Study