Experimental determination of order in non-equilibrium solids using colloidal gels

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Gao, Yongxiang Kilfoil, Maria Lynn
Copyright Year	2004
Abstract	The idea of quantifying order in disordered systems has been introduced recently by Torquato and co-workers (2000 Phys. Rev. E 62 993–1001). We are interested in the application of this idea to measure structure in non-equilibrium systems. Here we focus on gels, using as a model system colloidal gels formed from hard spheres with polymer added to the systems to induce a controlled, weak attraction. To describe the structure of the gels we use real space imaging via confocal microscopy to obtain the full three-dimensional structure. We measure experimentally both translational order and bond angle correlations, defining a new (refined) translational order parameter that is sensitive to long range order in these non-random packings. This metric is also sensitive to anisotropy, which should be important in the many physical situations where an external force is present. The bond angle distribution shows coordinated organization. To give a clearer physical picture for gels, we compare the experimental data to computer generated hard sphere systems.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1088/0953-8984/16/44/016
Volume Number	16
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://people.umass.edu/kilfoil/Papers/cm4_44_016.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-8984%2F16%2F44%2F016
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article