Publisher's Note: Ionic colloidal crystals: Ordered, multicomponent structures via controlled heterocoagulation [Phys. Rev. E73, 011402 (2006)]

Gas-liquid phase separation in oppositely charged colloids: Stability and interfacial tension

“…We have related the Yukawa restricted primitive model (YRPM) to the DLVO theory, which was recently used to explain experimental results on oppositely charged colloids. 13,17,19,54 The DLVO theory predicts a contact value that depends on the screening length. Thus, in order to facilitate the comparison between the results for different screening lengths, we define a temperature scale that is independent of the screening length.…”

Controlled and rapid ordering of oppositely charged colloidal particles

“…Because our experiments were done at low ionic concentration, the Yukawa pair-potential provides a good approximation to the coulombic interaction Eq. (2) [10] between two charged spheres. However, a two-particle potential may not suffice in cases where local order produces multiple particle proximity effects.…”

“…Conventional processes for ordering colloids, which employ repulsive forces between particles that carry electrostatic charges of the same sign, produce close-packed crystalline analogs. Using a composite suspension of two particle types, each monodisperse with a different size and with opposing charge, provides a method to create colloidal crystals of lower symmetry [9][10][11][12][13], and therefore may produce stable structures with novel photonic, sensing, and filtering properties. However, processing methods that produce lower symmetry structures prove to be more difficult to realize, primarily because the colloidal composite's attractive coulombic and van der Waal's forces limits the length scale of ordering.…”

Non-equilibrium ionic assemblies of oppositely charged nanoparticles

“…Recently, a diverse range of binary super-lattice structures have been reported by electrostatic self-assembly of oppositely charged NPs 4,6,13 including unusual non-close-packed structures such as diamond-like lattices. 6 Moreover, computational researchers have applied the Madelung summation approach, 14 mean-eld theory 15 and computer simulations 14,16,17 to determine the stable superlattice structures that agree with experimental ndings. However, super-lattices represent only equilibrium or static selfassembled structures (minimal free energy state) of oppositely charged NPs.…”