The effects of size polydispersity in nearly hard sphere colloids

Abstract

We have investigated the effects of size polydispersity on glass transition in nearly hard sphere colloidal systems in non-equilibrium condition after rapid compression by the Brownian dynamics simulation method. The interparticle interaction is chosen as the Yukawa potential and the size distribution of colloidal particles is assumed to be Gaussian. We found that the critical standard deviation of the size distribution divided by the mean size is about 6∼7% above which no crystallisation takes place for arbitrary density, and also found that there exists a disordered state even with a smaller size polydispersity than the critical value in the high density region, as is observed in the real colloidal suspensions. We also mention the possibility that by performing Brownian dynamics simulations on colloidal systems with a sufficiently reduced level of thermal noise, one can observe a sharp glass transition