Abstract
.Colloidal systems offer unique opportunities for the study of phase formation and structure since their characteristic length scales are accessible to visible light. As a model system the two-dimensional assembly of colloidal magnetic and non-magnetic particles dispersed in a ferrofluid (FF) matrix is studied by transmission optical microscopy. We present a method to statistically evaluate images with thousands of particles and map phases by extraction of local variables. Different lattice structures and long-range connected branching chains are observed, when tuning the effective magnetic interaction and varying particle ratios.Graphical abstract
Highlights
Phase behavior and phase transitions have been studied in colloidal systems, with examples of such studies focusing on electric [1] or magnetic interactions [2,3,4,5]
We present a method to automatically process large microscope images
As an example we study magnetic and non-magnetic particles solved in a FF of different concentrations and, different particle interactions
Summary
Phase behavior and phase transitions have been studied in colloidal systems, with examples of such studies focusing on electric [1] or magnetic interactions [2,3,4,5]. The beauty of microscopy in this context is that the structures are imaged in real space and can be directly visualized. This allows to calculate directly the free energy of a system from the configuration of the colloidal particles and compare it to theoretical prediction. One way to overcome this challenge are scattering methods directly probing the ensemble average in Fourier space [21]. For inhomogeneous samples and non-periodic structures, the scattering data can be difficult to interpret
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