Mixtures of anisotropic and spherical colloids: Phase behavior, confinement, percolation phenomena and kinetics

Autor(en)

Tanja Schilling, Sven Dorosz, Marc Radu, M. Mathew, Swetlana Jungblut, Kurt Binder

Abstrakt

Purely entropic systems such as suspensions of hard rods, platelets and spheres show rich phase behavior. Rods and platelets have successfully been used as models to predict the equilibrium properties of liquid crystals for several decades. Over the past years hard particle models have also been studied in the context of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, in particular regarding the glass transition, jamming, sedimentation and crystallization. Recently suspensions of hard anisotropic particles also moved into the focus of materials scientists who work on conducting soft matter composites. An insulating polymer resin that is mixed with conductive filler particles becomes conductive when the filler percolates. In this context the mathematical topic of connectivity percolation finds an application in modern nano-technology. In this article, we briefly review recent work on the phase behavior, confinement effects, percolation transition and phase transition kinetics in hard particle models. In the first part, we discuss the effects that particle anisotropy and depletion have on the percolation transition. In the second part, we present results on the kinetics of the liquid-to-crystal transition in suspensions of spheres and of ellipsoids.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Luxembourg, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Journal

European Physical Journal. Special Topics

Band

222

Seiten

3039-3052

Anzahl der Seiten

14

ISSN

1951-6355

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-02074-y

Publikationsdatum

11-2013

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103036 Theoretische Physik, 103015 Kondensierte Materie, 103029 Statistische Physik

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/75293974-d610-4ee8-8a26-1f64e9073694