Journal
SOFT MATTER
Volume 8, Issue 5, Pages 1584-1592Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c1sm06735d
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM)
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
- International Helmholtz Research School of Biophysics and Soft Matter (IHRS BioSoft)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [SFB-TR6]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We report on depolarized and non-depolarized dynamic light scattering, static light scattering, and steady shear viscosity measurements on interacting charge-stabilized gibbsite platelets suspended in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). The average collective and (long-time) translational self-diffusion coefficients, and the rotational diffusion coefficient, have been measured as functions of the platelet volume fraction phi, up to the isotropic-liquid crystal (I/LC) transition. The non-depolarized intensity autocorrelation function, measured at low scattering wavenumbers, consists of a fast and a slowly decaying mode which we interpret as the orientationally averaged collective and translational self-diffusion coefficients, respectively. Both the rotational and the long-time self-diffusion coefficients decrease very strongly, by more than two orders of magnitude, in going from the very dilute limit to the I/LC transition concentration. A similarly strong decrease, with increasing phi, is observed for the inverse zero-strain limiting steady shear viscosity. With increasing phi, increasingly strong shear-thinning is observed, accompanied by a shrinking of the low shear-rate Newtonian plateau. The measured diffusion coefficients are interpreted theoretically in terms of a simple model of effective charged spheres interacting by a screened Coulomb potential, with hydrodynamic interactions included. The disk-like particle shape, and the measured particle radius and thickness polydispersities, enter into the model calculations via the scattering amplitudes. The interaction-induced enhancement of the collective diffusion coefficient by more than a factor of 20 at larger phi is well captured in the effective sphere model, whereas the strong declines of the experimental translational and rotational self-diffusion coefficients are underestimated.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available