Colloidal systems with a short-range attraction and long-range repulsion: phase diagrams, structures, and dynamics

Publication date: Available online 8 February 2019Source: Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface ScienceAuthor(s): Yun Liu, Yuyin XiAbstractColloidal systems with both a short-range attraction and long-range repulsion (SALR) have rich phases compared with the traditional hard sphere systems or sticky hard sphere systems. The competition between the short-range attraction and long-range repulsion results in the frustrated phase separation, which leads to the formation of intermediate range order (IRO) structures and introduces new phases to both equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams, such as clustered fluid, cluster percolated fluid, Wigner glass, cluster glass. One hallmark feature of SALR systems is the appearance of the IRO peak in the inter-particle structure factor, which is associated with different types of IRO structures. The relationship between the IRO peak and the clustered fluid state has been careful investigated. Not surprisingly, the morphology of clusters in solutions can be affected and controlled by the SALR potential. And the effect of the SALR potential on the dynamic properties are also reviewed here. Even though much progress has been made in understanding SALR systems, many future works are still needed to have quantitative comparisons between experiments and simulations/theories, and understand the differences from different experimental systems. Due to the large parameter space available for SALR systems, many exciting features of SALR systems...

Source: Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science - February 8, 2019 Category: Chemistry Source Type: research