Beyond the ``Coffee Ring'': Re-entrant Ordering in an Evaporation-Driven Self-Assembly in a Colloidal Suspension on a Substrate

Mukherjee, Sumanta and Saha, Arnab and Santra, Pralay K and Sengupta, Surajit and Sarma, DD (2014) Beyond the ``Coffee Ring'': Re-entrant Ordering in an Evaporation-Driven Self-Assembly in a Colloidal Suspension on a Substrate. In: JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY B, 118 (9). pp. 2559-2567.

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Abstract

We study the phenomenon of evaporation-driven self-assembly of a colloid suspension of silica microspheres in the interior region and away from the rim of the droplet on a glass plate. In view of the importance of achieving a large-area, monolayer assembly, we first realize a suitable choice of experimental conditions, minimizing the influence of many other competing phenomena that usually complicate the understanding of fundamental concepts of such self-assembly processes in the interior region of a drying droplet. Under these simplifying conditions to bring out essential aspects, our experiments unveil an interesting competition between ordering and compaction in such drying systems in analogy to an impending glass transition. We establish a re-entrant behavior in the order disorder phase diagram as a function of the particle density, such that there is an optimal range of the particle density to realize the long-range ordering. The results are explained with the help of simulations and phenomenological theory.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY B
Publisher:	AMER CHEMICAL SOC
Additional Information:	copyright for this article belongs to AMER CHEMICAL SOC, USA
Department/Centre:	Division of Chemical Sciences > Solid State & Structural Chemistry Unit
Date Deposited:	24 Apr 2014 07:36
Last Modified:	24 Apr 2014 07:36
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/48909

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