Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Monte Carlo Simulation of Cylinders with Short-Range Attractions

Published

Author(s)

Harold W. Hatch, Nathan Mahynski, R. P. Murphy, Marco Blanco, Vincent K. Shen

Abstract

Cylindrical or rod-like particles are promising materials for the applications of fillers in nanocomposite ma- terials and additives to control rheological properties of colloidal suspensions. Recent advances in particle synthesis allows for cylinders to be synthesized with short-ranged attractions to study the gelation as a func- tion of packing fraction, aspect ratio and temperature. In order to aid in the interpretation of the small-angle scattering experimental results over this wide range of conditions, computer simulation methods were used to model these particles with specialized Monte Carlo algorithms and optimized superquadric potentials. The attractive interaction between neighboring rods increases with the amount of locally- accessible surface area, thus leading to a patchy anisotropic interaction. We find that the cylinders form homogenous fluids, clusters, gels or glasses as a function of the attraction strength, volume fraction and aspect ratio.
Citation
The Journal of Chemical Physics

Keywords

Anisotropic colloids, rods, self-assembly, computer simulation Research category, Physics, Chemistry->Theroetical chemistry and modeling

Citation

Hatch, H. , Mahynski, N. , , R. , Blanco, M. and Shen, V. (2018), Monte Carlo Simulation of Cylinders with Short-Range Attractions, The Journal of Chemical Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925719 (Accessed April 25, 2024)
Created September 12, 2018, Updated February 11, 2020