Hard sphere crystal nucleation and growth near large spherical impurities

We report how large spherical impurities affect the nucleation and growth of hard sphere colloidal crystals. Both the impurities and the colloids are fluorescently labelled polymethyltuetacrylate particles and are dispersed in an optically and density matching solvent mixture. Crystal growth, initiated either at the impurity surface, or at the sample bottom, was studied by imaging sequences of two-dimensional xy-slices in the plane of the impurity's centre of mass with a laser scanning confocal microscope. At least two factors determine whether a large impurity can function as a seed for heterogeneous nucleation: timescales and impurity curvature. The curvature needs to be sufficiently low for crystal nuclei to form on the impurity surface. If bulk crystal growth has already approached the impurity, bulk growth is dominant over growth of crystallites on the impurity surface. Such surface crystallites eventually reorient to adapt to the overall bulk crystal symmetry.