Glassy States in Asymmetric Mixtures of Soft and Hard Colloids

Autor(en)

Domenico Truzzolillo, Daniela Marzi, John Marakis, Barbara Capone, Manuel Camargo, Abdul Munam, Firmin Moingeon, Mario Gauthier, Christos N. Likos, Dimitris Vlassopoulos

Abstrakt

By employing rheological experiments, mode coupling theory, and computer simulations based on realistic coarse-grained models, we investigate the effects of small, hard colloids on the glassy states formed by large, soft colloids. Multiarm star polymers mimic hard and soft colloids by appropriately varying the number and size of their arms. The addition of hard colloids leads, depending on their concentration, to either melting of the soft glass or the emergence of two distinct glassy states. We explain our findings by depletion of the colloids adjacent to the stars, which leads to an arrested phase separation when the repulsive glass line meets the demixing binodal. The parameter-free agreement between experiment, theory, and simulations suggests the generic nature of our results and opens the route for designing soft-hard colloidal composites with tunable rheology.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Crete, Université Montpellier 2, Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (L2C) CNRS, UMR 5221, Universidad Antonio Nariño, University of Waterloo (UW)

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Band

111

Anzahl der Seiten

5

ISSN

0031-9007

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.208301

Publikationsdatum

11-2013

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103023 Polymerphysik

Schlagwörter

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/a65a57d9-a13d-4b44-90cf-81974e37e332