Science Daily January 5, 2021
Most experiments involving colloidal suspensions have relied on spherical colloids. Using polymer chemistry researchers in Germany manufactured small plastic particles, stretching, and cooling them until they achieved their ellipsoid forms and then placed them in a suitable solvent. They found that due to their distinct shapes their particles had orientation which gave rise to entirely new and previously unstudied kinds of complex behaviours. By changing particle concentrations in the suspensions, and tracking both the translational and rotational motion of the particles using confocal microscopy, they observed two competing glass transitions — a regular phase transformation and a nonequilibrium phase transformation — interacting with each other. The results give insight into the interplay between local structures and phase transformations and may thus help to shed light on the behaviour of complex systems and molecules ranging from the very small (biological) to the very big (cosmological). It also potentially impacts the development of liquid crystalline devices…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Characterization of ellipsoidal colloids and their packings. Credit: PNAS January 19, 2021 118 (3) e2018072118