Observation of the Disorder-Induced Crystal-to-Glass Transition

The role of frustration and quenched disorder in driving the transformation of a crystal into a glass is investigated in quasi-two-dimensional binary colloidal suspensions. Frustration is induced by added smaller particles. The crystal-glass transition is measured to differ from the liquid-glass transition in quantitative and qualitative ways. The crystal-glass transition bears structural signatures similar to those of the crystal-fluid transition: at the transition point, the persistence of orientational order decreases sharply from quasilong range to short range, and the orientational order susceptibility exhibits a maximum. The crystal-glass transition also features a sharp variation in particle dynamics: at the transition point, dynamic heterogeneity grows rapidly, and a dynamic correlation length scale increases abruptly

Measurement of correlations between low-frequency vibrational modes and particle rearrangements in quasi-two-dimensional colloidal glasses

We investigate correlations between low-frequency vibrational modes and rearrangements in two-dimensional colloidal glasses composed of thermosensitive microgel particles which readily permit variation of sample packing fraction. At each packing fraction, the particle displacement covariance matrix is measured and used to extract the vibrational spectrum of the "shadow" colloidal glass (i.e., the particle network with the same geometry and interactions as the sample colloid but absent damping). Rearrangements are induced by successive, small reductions in packing fraction. The experimental results suggest that low-frequency quasi-localized phonon modes in colloidal glasses, i.e., modes that present low energy barriers for system rearrangements, are spatially correlated with rearrangements in this thermal system

Effects of Particle Shape on Growth Dynamics at Edges of Evaporating Colloidal Drops

We study the influence of particle shape on growth processes at the edges of evaporating drops. Aqueous suspensions of colloidal particles evaporate on glass slides, and convective flows during evaporation carry particles from drop center to drop edge, where they accumulate. The resulting particle deposits grow inhomogeneously from the edge in two-dimensions, and the deposition front, or growth line, varies spatio-temporally. Measurements of the fluctuations of the deposition front during evaporation enable us to identify distinct growth processes that depend strongly on particle shape. Sphere deposition exhibits a classic Poisson like growth process; deposition of slightly anisotropic particles, however, belongs to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class, and deposition of highly anisotropic ellipsoids appears to belong to a third universality class, characterized by KPZ fluctuations in the presence of quenched disorder

Phonon Spectra, Nearest Neighbors, and Mechanical Stability of Disordered Colloidal Clusters with Attractive Interactions

We investigate the influence of morphology and size on the vibrational properties of disordered clusters of colloidal particles with attractive interactions. From measurements of displacement correlations between particles in each cluster, we extract vibrational properties of the corresponding "shadow" glassy cluster, with the same geometric configuration and interactions as the "source" cluster but without damping. Spectral features of the vibrational modes are found to depend strongly on the average number of nearest neighbors, $\bar{NN}$, but only weakly on the number of particles in each glassy cluster. In particular, the median phonon frequency, $\omega_{med}$, is essentially constant for $\bar{NN}$ $<2$ and then grows linearly with $\bar{NN}$ for $\bar{NN}$ $>2$. This behavior parallels concurrent observations about local isostatic structures, which are absent in clusters with $\bar{NN}$ $2$. Thus, cluster vibrational properties appear to be strongly connected to cluster mechanical stability (i.e., fraction of locally isostatic regions), and the scaling of $\omega_{med}$ with $\bar{NN}$ is reminiscent of the behavior of packings of spheres with repulsive interactions at the jamming transition. Simulations of random networks of springs corroborate observations and suggest that connections between phonon spectra and nearest neighbor number are generic to disordered networks.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Coffee Rings and Coffee Disks: Physics on the Edge

As many a coffee drinker knows, a drying drop of coffee typically leaves behind a ring-shaped stain of small grounds. Though the phenomenon is common, the mechanisms that drive it are rich with physics. As first elucidated by Robert Deegan and colleagues in 1997, the coffee ring results from radially outward fluid flows induced by so-called contact line pinning: The outer edge of a spilled coffee droplet grabs onto rough spots on the solid surface and becomes pinned in place. The evaporating drop thus retains its pinned diameter and flattens while it dries. That flattening, in turn, is accompanied by fluid flowing from the middle of the drop toward its edge to replenish evaporating water. Suspended particles—the coffee grounds—are carried to the edge of the drop by that flow. Once there, they pile up, one at a time, into a tightly jammed packing and produce the coffee ring. Deegan and company studied the ring growth empirically by following the individual frames in a video of plastic colloidal spheres suspended in an evaporating droplet

Irreversible Rearrangements, Correlated Domains, and Local Structure in Aging Glasses

Bidisperse colloidal suspensions of temperature-sensitive microgel spheres were quenched from liquid to glass states by a rapid temperature drop, and then the glass was permitted to age. Irreversible rearrangements, events that dramatically change a particle’s local environment, were observed to be closely related to dynamic heterogeneity. The rate of these irreversible events decreased during aging and the the number of particles required to move as part of these irreversible rearrangements increased. Thus, the slowing dynamics of aging were governed by growing, correlated domains of particles. Additionally, short-range order developed, and a spatial decay length scale associated with orientational order was found to grow during aging

Low-frequency vibrations of soft colloidal glasses

We conduct experiments on two-dimensional packings of colloidal thermosensitive hydrogel particles whose packing fraction can be tuned above the jamming transition by varying the temperature. By measuring displacement correlations between particles, we extract the vibrational properties of a corresponding "shadow" system with the same configuration and interactions, but for which the dynamics of the particles are undamped. The vibrational spectrum and the nature of the modes are very similar to those predicted for zero-temperature idealized sphere models and found in atomic and molecular glasses; there is a boson peak at low frequency that shifts to higher frequency as the system is compressed above the jamming transition.Comment: 4 figure