Sedimentation stacking diagram of binary colloidal mixtures and bulk phases in the plane of chemical potentials
D. de las Heras, and M. Schmidt
J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, 27, 194115, (2015) DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/27/19/194115
Full text: journal, pdf
Abstract:
We give a full account of a recently proposed theory that explicitly
relates the bulk phase diagram of a binary colloidal mixture to its
phase stacking phenomenology under gravity [Soft Matter 9,
8636 (2013)]. As we demonstrate, the full set of possible phase
stacking sequences in sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium originates
from straight lines (sedimentation paths) in the chemical potential
representation of the bulk phase diagram. From the analysis of various
standard topologies of bulk phase diagrams, we conclude that the
corresponding sedimentation stacking diagrams can be very rich, even
more so when finite sample height is taken into account. We apply the
theory to obtain the stacking diagram of a mixture of nonadsorbing polymers
and colloids. We also present a catalog of generic phase diagrams in the plane of chemical
potentials in order to facilitate the practical application of our
concept, which also generalizes to multi-component mixtures.
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