Fast Crystals and Strong Glasses
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: This talk describes new results on model colloid systems that provide insight into the behavior of fundamental problems in colloid physics, and more generally, for other materials as well. By visualizing the nucleation and growth of colloid crystals, we find that the incipient crystallites are much more disordered than expected, leading to a larger diversity of crystal morphologies. When the entropic contribution of these diverse morphologies is included in the free energy, we are able to describe the behavior very well, and can predict the nucleation rate surprisingly accurately. The talk also describes the glass transition in deformable colloidal particles, and will show that when the internal elasticity of the particles is included, the colloidal glass transition mimics that of molecular glass formers much more completely. These results also suggest that the elasticity at the scale of the fundamental unit, either colloid particle or molecule, determines the nature of the glass transition, as described by the "fragility."
Author: David A. Weitz
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2253488724