Abstract
Video microscopy reveals the full 2D phase diagram of a colloid with short- and long-range attractions, which could lead to a better understanding of the phase behavior of real-world 2D materials such as biological membranes and graphene.
Highlights
Over the years, the study of two-dimensional (2D) phase diagrams has been a perennial research focus [1,2,3,4,5], because such diagrams demonstrate the generic features of phase behaviors in highly functional materials including graphene, protein membranes, and nanocrystals on graphite
For long-range systems, equilibrium vapor-liquid coexistence is observed, which paves the way for the exploration of critical behaviors
Our experiments reveal the general features of phase behaviors shared by 2D attractive systems including graphene, protein membranes, and adsorbed nanocrystals
Summary
The study of two-dimensional (2D) phase diagrams has been a perennial research focus [1,2,3,4,5], because such diagrams demonstrate the generic features of phase behaviors in highly functional materials including graphene, protein membranes, and nanocrystals on graphite. For long-range attractive systems, Nelson and Halperin [6] construct a speculative 2D phase diagram where solid, fluid, vapor, and hexatic phases are presented. This diagram is notably different from a three-dimensional (3D) diagram; it predicts that melting could proceed through two secondorder phase transitions from the solid to a hexatic phase and from the hexatic to a liquid phase. Attractive systems are more analogous to real materials and have been more intensively studied with simulations [9,10,11,12,13,14] and tested with several theories [15,16,17], but the topic of transition order remains a subject of debate [2,18]. Because of well-known difficulties with the interpretation of simulation results in the vicinity of a second-order transition, published studies have arrived at inconclusive estimates of the critical temperature of the Lennard-Jones
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