On the role of hydrodynamic interactions in colloidal gelation

In this letter, we investigate several aspects related to the effect of hydrodynamic interactions oil phase separation-induced gelation of colloidal particles. We explain physically the observation of hydrodynamic stabilization of cellular network structures in two dimensions. We demonstrate that hydrodynamic interactions have only a minor quantitative influence oil thee structure of transient gels in three dimensions. We discuss some experimental implications of our results.