Issue 18, 2017

Assembly of hard spheres in a cylinder: a computational and experimental study

Abstract

Hard spheres are an important benchmark of our understanding of natural and synthetic systems. In this work, colloidal experiments and Monte Carlo simulations examine the equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium assembly of hard spheres of diameter σ within cylinders of diameter σD ≤ 2.82σ. Although phase transitions formally do not exist in such systems, marked structural crossovers can nonetheless be observed. Over this range of D, we find in simulations that structural crossovers echo the structural changes in the sequence of densest packings. We also observe that the out-of-equilibrium self-assembly depends on the compression rate. Slow compression approximates equilibrium results, while fast compression can skip intermediate structures. Crossovers for which no continuous line-slip exists are found to be dynamically unfavorable, which is the main source of this difference. Results from colloidal sedimentation experiments at low diffusion rate are found to be consistent with the results of fast compressions, as long as appropriate boundary conditions are used.

Graphical abstract: Assembly of hard spheres in a cylinder: a computational and experimental study

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
14 Feb 2017
Accepted
02 Mar 2017
First published
09 Mar 2017

Soft Matter, 2017,13, 3296-3306

Assembly of hard spheres in a cylinder: a computational and experimental study

L. Fu, C. Bian, C. W. Shields, D. F. Cruz, G. P. López and P. Charbonneau, Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 3296 DOI: 10.1039/C7SM00316A

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