We studied the orientational order of one-patch colloidal particles (Janus particles) in a close-packed monolayer. In an experiment on hemispherically patched particles, we realized a highly ordered zigzag stripe pattern by inducing directional growth of the pattern via a phase transition of the solvent. Upon spontaneous ordering by strengthening the inter-patch attraction, however, the particles are trapped in a poorly ordered zigzag pattern, illustrating the importance of controlling kinetics to attain a highly ordered state. The patch-size dependence of an equilibrium orientational order is experimentally observed under moderate inter-patch attraction. We also calculated the equilibrium order against the patch size and attraction in a Monte Carlo simulation. In the simulation, the rather discrete transition between a zigzag stripe, tiling of triangular trimers and tiling of dimers under strong attraction becomes continuous with weakening attraction. The experimental result not only coincides with the simulation qualitatively but also suggests that a particular cluster is selectively formed by nonuniform inter-patch attraction in the experiment. The effect of patch-substrate attraction and commonalities of the order with liquid crystals are also discussed.

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Phase separation is one of the most fundamental physical phenomena that controls the morphology of heterogeneous structures. Phase separation of a binary mixture of simple liquids produces only two morphologies: a bicontinuous or a droplet structure in the case of a symmetric or an asymmetric composition, respectively. For complex fluids, there is a possibility to produce other interesting morphologies. We found that a network structure of the minority phase can also be induced transiently on phase separation if the dynamics of the minority phase are much slower than those of the majority phase. Here we induce a cellular structure of the minority phase intentionally with the help of its smectic ordering, using phase separation of a lyotropic liquid crystal into the isotropic and smectic phase. We can control the three morphologies, cellular, network and droplet structures, solely by changing the heating rate. We demonstrate that the kinetic interplay between phase separation and smectic ordering is a key to the morphological selection. This may provide a new route to the formation of network and cellular morphologies in soft materials.

We experimentally study the motion of optically driven colloidal particles on a circular path by varying their number N. Although an identical driving force is applied to each particle, their equally spaced configuration is hydrodynamically unstable, and a doublet configuration is spontaneously formed. In small-N systems, the angular difference between neighboring particles exhibits oscillatory or nonoscillatory behavior. The number of oscillatory modes that appear depends on the maximum number of doublets that the system can contain. Frequent switching between different modes was observed with increasing N. The characteristic frequencies of the oscillatory modes are discussed theoretically by linear stability analysis of the equations that govern the motion of hydrodynamically coupled particles. The evaluated frequencies of the slowest modes exhibit reasonably good agreement with those of the mainly observed modes in experiments. The relationship between the characteristic frequencies and specific configurations is confirmed experimentally by setting a specific initial configuration for the particles. An increase in N also enhances the mean angular velocity of the particles owing to the reduced effective viscosity in large-N systems.