Long-range attraction between colloidal spheres at the air-water interface: The consequence of an irregular meniscus

Stamou, Dimitrios; Duschl, Claus; Johannsmann, Diethelm

doi:10.1103/physreve.62.5263

Cited by 409 publications

(672 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In this limit, particles with undulated contact lines distort the interface around them, with an associated excess interfacial area. The deformation fields and interfacial area depend on the relative position of the particles, yielding decreasing capillary energy as particles approach [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Curvature capillary migration of microspheres

2015

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We address the question: How does capillarity propel microspheres along curvature gradients? For a particle on a fluid interface, there are two conditions that can apply at the three phase contact line: Either the contact line adopts an equilibrium contact angle, or it can be pinned by kinetic trapping, e.g. at chemical heterogeneities, asperities or other pinning sites on the particle surface. We formulate the curvature capillary energy for both scenarios for particles smaller than the capillary length and far from any pinning boundaries. The scale and range of the distortion made by the particle are set by the particle radius; we use singular perturbation methods to find the distortions and to rigorously evaluate the associated capillary energies. For particles with equilibrium contact angles, contrary to the literature, we find that the capillary energy is negligible, with the first contribution bounded to fourth order in the product of the particle radius and the deviatoric curvature. For pinned contact lines, we find curvature capillary energies that are finite, with a functional form investigated previously by us for disks and microcylinders on curved interfaces. In experiments, we show microsphere migrate along deterministic trajectories toward regions of maximum deviatoric curvature with curvature capillary energies ranging from 6 × 10 3 − 5 × 10 4 kBT . These data agree with the curvature capillary energy for the case of pinned contact lines. The underlying physics of this migration is a coupling of the interface deviatoric curvature with the quadrupolar mode of nanometric disturbances in the interface owing to the particle's contact line undulations. This work is an example of the major implications of nanometric roughness and contact line pinning for colloidal dynamics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alternatively, the contact line can be pinned by kinetic trapping at heterogeneities, roughness or other pinning sites on the particle surface [10,[14][15][16][17][18]. Curvature capillary migration depends on the coupling of the particle-sourced distortion with the host interface shape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curvature capillary migration of microspheres

2015

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“…particle, and a quadrupolar capillary attraction, which is thought to arise from undulations of the contact line due to particle roughness 33 . But it is not clear whether the results of these experiments, which use spreading solvents to deposit the particles on the interface, should apply to systems such as Pickering emulsions 5 and colloidosomes 8,12 , which are prepared using a different method, mechanical agitation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Physical ageing of the contact line on colloidal particles at liquid interfaces

et al. 2011

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“…However, it is straightforward to include such effects in our formalism. This kind of situation naturally arises from an irregular three-phase contact line between a colloid and the fluid-fluid interface it is trapped at [34]. Macroscopically, we see corn flakes perturbing the surface of a bowl of milk in a similar way.…”

Section: On Corn Flakesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Effective field theory approach to fluctuation-induced forces between colloids at an interface

2012

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We discuss an effective field theory (EFT) approach to the computation of fluctuation-induced interactions between particles bound to a thermally fluctuating fluid surface controlled by surface tension. By describing particles as points, EFT avoids computing functional integrals subject to difficult constraints. Still, all information pertaining to particle size and shape is systematically restored by amending the surface Hamiltonian with a derivative expansion. The free energy is obtained as a cumulant expansion, for which straightforward techniques exist. We derive a complete description for rigid axisymmetric objects, which allows us to develop a full asymptotic expansion-in powers of the inverse distance-for the pair interaction. We also demonstrate by a few examples the efficiency with which multibody interactions can be computed. Moreover, although the main advantage of the EFT approach lies in explicit computation, we discuss how one can infer certain features of cases involving flexible or anisotropic objects. The EFT description also permits a systematic computation of ground-state surface-mediated interactions, which we illustrate with a few examples.

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Long-range attraction between colloidal spheres at the air-water interface: The consequence of an irregular meniscus

Cited by 409 publications

References 32 publications

Curvature capillary migration of microspheres

Curvature capillary migration of microspheres

Physical ageing of the contact line on colloidal particles at liquid interfaces

Effective field theory approach to fluctuation-induced forces between colloids at an interface

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