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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 10: Colloids and Complex Fluids III (joint session CPP/BP/DY)
DY 10.1: Talk
Monday, March 7, 2016, 15:00–15:15, H42
Directed assembly of soft colloids through rapid solvent exchange — •Arash Nikoubashman1, Victoria E. Lee2, Chris S. Sosa2, Robert K. Prud'homme2, Rodney D. Priestley2, and Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos2 — 1Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany — 2Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University, USA
We studied the directed assembly of soft nanoparticles through rapid micromixing of polymers in solution with a non-solvent. Both experiments and computer simulations were performed to elucidate the underlying physics and to investigate the role of various process parameters. In particular, we discovered that no external stabilizing agents or charged end-groups are required to keep the colloids separated from each other, when water is used as the non-solvent. The size of the nanoparticles can be reliably tuned through the mixing rate and the ratio between polymer solution and non-solvent. Furthermore, we were able to fabricate a wide variety of patchy colloids, such as Janus particles, when polymer blends were used in the feed stream. Our results demonstrate that this mechanism is highly promising for the mass fabrication of uniformly-sized colloidal particles, using a wide variety of polymeric feed materials.