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

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Summary

Introduction

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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