Attractions in sterically stabilized silica dispersions

Nonergodicity transitions in colloidal suspensions with attractive interactions

“…Based on this suggested interpretation of the MCT nonergodicity transitions, several features of the computed HCAY density-temperature diagrams agree qualitatively with experimental observations made on colloid-polymer mixtures and sterically stabilized suspensions [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]16,17]. First, the gel transitions appear to lie at lower temperatures than, but otherwise track, the freezing line when present.…”

“…It is by now well established that when the range of the colloidal attraction is decreased the phase diagram undergoes a progression from gas-liquid-solid to fluid-solid coexistence, the latter with a subcooled critical point which is metastable with respect to fluid-solid coexistence [1][2][3][4][5]. Numerous experimental studies show that suspensions often form incompletely equilibrated solids with the appearance of gels where one expects a fluid-solid [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] or gas-liquid [15] phase separation from equilibrium theory. The systems studied include mixtures of colloids and non-adsorbing polymer [6][7][8][9][10][11] and sterically stabilized colloids in marginal solvents [12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…Numerous experimental studies show that suspensions often form incompletely equilibrated solids with the appearance of gels where one expects a fluid-solid [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] or gas-liquid [15] phase separation from equilibrium theory. The systems studied include mixtures of colloids and non-adsorbing polymer [6][7][8][9][10][11] and sterically stabilized colloids in marginal solvents [12][13][14][15][16][17]. In the former case, the attractions stem from depletion of the polymer coils from the regions between closely spaced particles [18,19], and in the latter they are caused by surface grafted chain-chain interactions [20].…”

Interactions, phase transitions and metastable states in concentrated colloidal dispersions

“…The quality of the solVent for the octadecyl chains decreases with decreasing temperature, resulting in an increasing depth e of the attractive potential. Eventually, this leads to a gas-liquid phase separation [10,11].…”

Interplay between Spinodal Decomposition and Glass Formation in Proteins Exhibiting Short-Range Attractions

“…A generic state diagram has emerged from this effort in characterizing dynamical arrest in attractive particle suspensions [6,11,12], but many questions remain unanswered and a theoretical picture unifying these two limits is clearly still missing. This is particularly true for the case of intermediate and a strength of the attraction of & 10k B T, where the system may undergo a liquid-gas phase separation that intervenes with dynamical arrest.Early pioneering work of Vrij, Dhont, and collaborators revealed evidence for an arrested spinodal decomposition of attractive colloidal particles, where complete macroscopic phase separation is hindered by an arrest transition of the dense phase at much smaller than those estimated from the high density branch of the equilibrium coexistence curve [13,14]. Subsequently, the existence of ''transient gels'' was described in colloid-polymer mixtures [15] where fingerprints of spinodal decomposition were identified in the measured static structure factor [16].…”