Strong collective attraction in colloidal clusters on a liquid-air interface
- Authors
- Pergamenshchik, V. M.
- Issue Date
- Jan-2009
- Publisher
- AMER PHYSICAL SOC
- Keywords
- colloids; interface phenomena; nematic liquid crystals
- Citation
- PHYSICAL REVIEW E, v.79, no.1
- Indexed
- SCIE
SCOPUS
- Journal Title
- PHYSICAL REVIEW E
- Volume
- 79
- Number
- 1
- URI
- https://scholar.korea.ac.kr/handle/2021.sw.korea/120857
- DOI
- 10.1103/PhysRevE.79.011407
- ISSN
- 1539-3755
1550-2376
- Abstract
- It is shown that in a cluster of many colloids, trapped at a liquid-air interface, the well-known vertical-force-induced pairwise logarithmic attraction changes to a strongly enhanced power-law attraction. In large two-dimensional clusters, the attraction energy scales as the inverse square of the distance between colloids. The enhancement is given by the ratio eta=(square of the capillary length)/(interface surface area per colloid) and can be as large as 10(5). This explains why a very small vertical force on colloids, which is too weak to bring two of them together, can stabilize many-body structures on a liquid-air interface. The profile of a cluster is shown to consist of a large slow collective envelope modulated by a fast low-amplitude perturbation due to individual colloids. A closed equation for the slow envelope, which incorporates an arbitrary power-law repulsion between colloids, is derived. For example, this equation is solved for a large circular cluster with the hard-core colloid repulsion. It is suggested that the predicted effect is responsible for mysterious stabilization of colloidal structures observed in experiments on a surface of isotropic liquid and nematic liquid crystal.
- Files in This Item
- There are no files associated with this item.
- Appears in
Collections - College of Science and Technology > Department of Display and Semiconductor Physics > 1. Journal Articles
Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.