Directional-dependent pockets drive columnar-columnar coexistence

Álvaro González García; Remco Tuinier; Gijsbertus De With; Alejandro Cuetos

doi:10.1039/d0sm00802h

Directional-dependent pockets drive columnar-columnar coexistence

Álvaro González García^*
, Remco Tuinier
, Gijsbertus De With
, Alejandro Cuetos

^*Corresponding author for this work

Utrecht University
Universidad Pablo de Olavide
Eindhoven University of Technology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The rational design of materials requires a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms driving their self-assembly. This may be particularly challenging in highly dense and shape-asymmetric systems. Here we show how the addition of tiny non-adsorbing spheres (depletants) to a dense system of hard disc-like particles (discotics) leads to coexistence between two distinct, highly dense (liquid)-crystalline columnar phases. This coexistence emerges due to the directional-dependent free-volume pockets for depletants. Theoretical results are confirmed by simulations explicitly accounting for the binary mixture of interest. We define the stability limits of this columnar-columnar coexistence and quantify the directional-dependent depletant partitioning. This journal is

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	6720-6724
Number of pages	5
Journal	Soft Matter
Volume	16
Issue number	29
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1039/d0sm00802h
Publication status	Published - 7 Aug 2020

Funding

Á. G. G. and A. C. thank Prof. A. Patti for the meeting organized at Manchester University in June 2018. Prof. Lekkerkerker and the SPC-TGM participants are thanked for discussions. AC thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación y Uni-versidades and FEDER (PGC2018-097151-B-I00) for funding and C3UPO for HPC facilities.

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AU - González García, Álvaro

AU - Tuinier, Remco

AU - De With, Gijsbertus

AU - Cuetos, Alejandro

PY - 2020/8/7

Y1 - 2020/8/7

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AB - The rational design of materials requires a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms driving their self-assembly. This may be particularly challenging in highly dense and shape-asymmetric systems. Here we show how the addition of tiny non-adsorbing spheres (depletants) to a dense system of hard disc-like particles (discotics) leads to coexistence between two distinct, highly dense (liquid)-crystalline columnar phases. This coexistence emerges due to the directional-dependent free-volume pockets for depletants. Theoretical results are confirmed by simulations explicitly accounting for the binary mixture of interest. We define the stability limits of this columnar-columnar coexistence and quantify the directional-dependent depletant partitioning. This journal is

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JO - Soft Matter

JF - Soft Matter

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Directional-dependent pockets drive columnar-columnar coexistence

Abstract

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