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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 51: Complex Fluids and Soft Matter (joint session DY/CPP)

CPP 51.7: Talk

Friday, March 22, 2024, 11:15–11:30, BH-N 243

Dilute gel networks vs. clumpy gels in colloid-polymer mixtures — Matthias Gimperlein and •Michael Schmiedeberg — Inst. für Theor. Phys. 1, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

The formation of gels differs from the behavior observed in other slowly relaxing systems [1,2]. A simple system to explore gelation is a colloid-polymer mixture, where there are complex heterogeneous phases due to the competition of short-ranged repulsions, depletion attractions, and longer-ranged screened Coulomb repulsions.

Here we study the differences of dense clumpy gels and dilute gel networks in terms of dynamics and structure formation. For example, we apply reduction algorithms [3,4] and observe that dilute and dense structures differ in the way structural properties like the typical thickness of the strands emerge. We also analyze the percolation behavior [5] and the formation of pentagonal bipyramids (as in [1]).

Finally we demonstrate that neural networks can be trained to recognize the differences between dilute gel networks and clumpy gels.

[1] H. Tsurusawa and H. Tanaka, Nat. Phys. 19, 1171 (2023).

[2] M. Schmiedeberg, Nat. Phys. 19, 1078 (2023).

[3] M. Gimperlein and M. Schmiedeberg, J. Chem. Phys. 154, 244904 (2021).

[4] J. N. Immink, J. J. Erik Maris, R. F. Capellmann, S. U. Egelhaaf, P. Schurtenberger and J. Stenhammar, Soft Matter 17, 8354 (2021).

[5] M. Kohl, R.F. Capellmann, M. Laurati, S.U. Egelhaaf, and M. Schmiedeberg, Nat. Comm. 7, 11817 (2016).

Keywords: gels; colloid-polymer mixture; network structures; neural networks