Non-equilibrium melting of colloidal crystals in confinement

International audience; We report on a novel and flexible experiment to investigate the non-equilibrium melting behaviour of model crystals made from charged colloidal spheres. In a slit geometry polycrystalline material formed in a low salt region is driven by hydrostatic pressure up an evolving gradient in salt concentration and melts at large salt concentration. Depending on particle and initial salt concentration, driving velocity and the local salt concentration complex morphologic evolution is observed. Crystal-melt interface positions and the melting velocity are obtained quantitatively from time resolved Bragg- and polarization microscopic measurements. A simple theoretical model pr…