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Depletion-Driven Phase Separation and Reversible Aggregation in Confined Colloidal Mixtures

Published

Author(s)

Erik K. Hobbie

Abstract

The kinetics of depletion-driven size segregation in confined binary mixtures of nearly-hard-sphere colloids are studied with video microscopy. During the transient fluid-fluid phase separation that occurs as an intermediate step in the formation of isolated large-sphere-crystallites, the structure factor of the (larger)minority component exhibits a spinodal-like evoluation, while the cluster-size distribution exhibits scaling reminiscent of colloidal aggregation. The scaled distributions show a crossover from power-law (x1) behavior, where x=k/s is the ratio of cluster-size index to average cluster size. A phenomenological explanation based on the reversible Smoluchowski equation is proposed.
Citation
Langmuir
Volume
15
Issue
No. 26

Keywords

colloidal aggregation, dupletion force

Citation

Hobbie, E. (1999), Depletion-Driven Phase Separation and Reversible Aggregation in Confined Colloidal Mixtures, Langmuir, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=851547 (Accessed October 15, 2025)

Issues

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Created December 1, 1999, Updated June 2, 2021
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