12
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The effect of inter-cluster interactions on the structure of colloidal clusters

      Preprint

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Colloidal systems present exciting opportunities to study clusters. Unlike atomic clusters, which are frequently produced at extremely low density, colloidal clusters may interact with one another. Here we consider the effect of such interactions on the intra-cluster structure in simulations of colloidal cluster fluids. A sufficient increase in density leads to a higher population of clusters in the ground state. In other words, inter-cluster interactions perturb the intra-cluster behaviour, such that each cluster may no longer be considered as an isolated system. Conversely, for dilute, weakly interacting cluster fluids little dependence on colloid concentration is observed, and we thus argue that it is reasonable to treat each cluster as an isolated system.

          Related collections

          Most cited references24

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Dense packing and symmetry in small clusters of microspheres.

          When small numbers of colloidal microspheres are attached to the surfaces of liquid emulsion droplets, removing fluid from the droplets leads to packings of spheres that minimize the second moment of the mass distribution. The structures of the packings range from sphere doublets, triangles, and tetrahedra to exotic polyhedra not found in infinite lattice packings, molecules, or minimum-potential energy clusters. The emulsion system presents a route to produce new colloidal structures and a means to study how different physical constraints affect symmetry in small parcels of matter.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Structural properties of nanoclusters: Energetic, thermodynamic, and kinetic effects

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles.

              It is easy to understand the self-assembly of particles with anisotropic shapes or interactions (for example, cobalt nanoparticles or proteins) into highly extended structures. However, there is no experimentally established strategy for creating a range of anisotropic structures from common spherical nanoparticles. We demonstrate that spherical nanoparticles uniformly grafted with macromolecules ('nanoparticle amphiphiles') robustly self-assemble into a variety of anisotropic superstructures when they are dispersed in the corresponding homopolymer matrix. Theory and simulations suggest that this self-assembly reflects a balance between the energy gain when particle cores approach and the entropy of distorting the grafted polymers. The effectively directional nature of the particle interactions is thus a many-body emergent property. Our experiments demonstrate that this approach to nanoparticle self-assembly enables considerable control for the creation of polymer nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties. Grafted nanoparticles are thus versatile building blocks for creating tunable and functional particle superstructures with significant practical applications.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                05 October 2010
                Article
                10.1016/j.jnoncrysol.2010.08.021
                1010.0816
                c5e9ebaa-f729-4034-a020-ef68e6c7c9dd

                http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

                History
                Custom metadata
                J. Non-Cryst. Solids 357 760-766 2011
                13 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by J. Non Cryst. Solids
                cond-mat.soft

                Comments

                Comment on this article