0000000000033651
AUTHOR
A. Kasper
Development of core-shell colloids to study self-diffusion in highly concentrated dispersions
To study single particle motion in highly concentrated colloidal dispersions, a host-tracer colloid system was developed, consisting of crosslinked polymer micronetwork spheres placed in a good solvent. The host colloid is made invisible to the experimental probe by matching its refractive index to that of the solvent. For the tracer particles a core-shell structure was chosen to ensure the interaction potential to be identical to that of the host particles. Therefore the shell was made of the same polymer as the host. The core differs in refractive index from the solvent and is therefore visible due to scattered light.
The effect of the internal architecture of polymer micronetwork colloids on the dynamics in highly concentrated dispersions
Motivated by the finding that colloidal dispersions of polymer micronetwork spheres with a cross-link density of 1:50 (inverse number of monomer units between crosslinks) show significant deviations from the dynamics of hard spheres in the colloid glass as seen by dynamic light scattering (DLS) (E. Bartsch, V. Frenz, H. Sillescu J. Non — Cryst. Solids 172–174 (1994), 88–97), we have undertaken a systematic study of the effect of the crosslink density on the dynamics at high concentrations. Long-time self-diffusion coefficients D S L and collective diffusion coefficients D c were measured for colloids with crosslink densities of 1:10, 1:20 and 1:50 by forced Rayleigh scattering (FRS) and the…