We study the influence of quenched disorder on the two-dimensional melting behavior of superparamagnetic colloidal particles, using both video microscopy and computer simulations of repulsive parallel dipoles. Quenched disorder is introduced by pinning a fraction of the particles to an underlying substrate. We confirm the occurrence of the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young scenario and observe an intermediate hexatic phase. While the fluid-hexatic transition remains largely unaffected by disorder, the hexatic-solid transition shifts to lower temperatures with increasing disorder. This results in a significantly broadened stability range of the hexatic phase. In addition, we observe spatiotemporal critical(like) fluctuations, which are consistent with the continuous character of the phase transitions. Characteristics of first-order transitions are not observed.
Using both video microscopy of superparamagnetic colloidal particles confined in two dimensions and corresponding computer simulations of repulsive parallel dipoles, we study the formation of fluctuating orientational clusters and topological defects in the context of the KTHNY-like melting scenario under quenched disorder. We analyze cluster densities, average cluster sizes, and the population of noncluster particles, as well as the development of defects, as a function of the system temperature and disorder strength. In addition, the probability distribution of clustering and orientational order is presented. We find that the well-known disorder-induced widening of the hexatic phase can be traced back to the distinct development characteristics of clusters and defects along the melting transitions from the solid phase to the hexatic phase to the isotropic fluid.
This mini-review is concerned with two-dimensional colloidal mixtures exposed to various kinds of external fields. By a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane, dipole moments are induced in paramagnetic particles which give rise to repulsive interactions leading to complex crystalline alloys in the composition-asymmetry diagram. A quench in the magnetic field induces complex crystal nucleation scenarios. If exposed to a gravitational field, these mixtures exhibit a brazilnut effect and show a boundary layering which is explained in terms of a depletion bubble picture. The latter persists for time-dependent gravity ("colloidal shaking"). Finally, we summarize crystallization effects when the second species is frozen in a disordered matrix which provides obstacles for the crystallizing component.
When exposed to strong shearing, the particles in a crystal will rearrange and ultimately, the crystal will break by forming large nonaffine defects. Even for the initial stage of this process, only little effort has been devoted to the understanding of the breaking process on the scale of the individual particle size for thermalized mixed crystals. Here, we explore the shear-induced breaking for an equimolar two-dimensional binary model crystal with a high interaction asymmetry between the two different species such that the initial crystal has an intersecting square sublattice of the two constituents. Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations, we show that the combination of shear and thermal fluctuations leads to a characteristic hierarchical breaking scenario where initially, the more strongly coupled particles are thermally distorted, paving the way for the weakly coupled particles to escape from their cage. This in turn leads to mobile defects which may finally merge, proliferating a cascade of defects, which triggers the final breakage of the crystal. This scenario is in marked contrast to the breakage of one-component crystals close to melting. Moreover, we explore the orientational dependence of the initial shear direction relative to the crystal orientation and compare this to the usual melting scenario without shear. Our results are verifiable in real-space experiments of superparamagnetic colloidal mixtures at a pending air-water interface in an external magnetic field where the shear can be induced by an external laser field.
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