Network physics of attractive colloidal gels: Resilience, rigidity, and phase diagram.

ABSTRACT: Colloidal gels exhibit solid-like behavior at vanishingly small fractions of solids, owing to ramified space-spanning networks that form due to particle-particle interactions. These networks give the gel its rigidity, and with stronger attractions the elasticity grows as well. The emergence of rigidity can be described through a mean field approach; nonetheless, fundamental understanding of how rigidity varies in gels of different attractions is lacking. Moreover, recovering an accurate gelation phase diagram based on the system's variables has been an extremely challenging task. Understanding the nature of colloidal clusters, and how rigidity emerges from their connections is key to controlling and designing gels with desirable properties. Here, we employ network analysis tools to interro

SUBMITTER: Nabizadeh M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10801866 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature