Vacancy diffusion in colloidal crystals

Abstract

The diffusion of vacancies in a one-dimensional colloidal crystal has been studied. The vacancy diffusion was constructed by superposition of single-step hopping processes using the framework of a biased continuous-time random walk. The statistics of single-step hopping between neighbouring lattice sites have been evaluated using an accurate numerical scheme for solving the Fokker–Planck equation. The model was used to explain the stratification mechanism of thin liquid films formed from macroparticle suspensions.