Melting of Multilayer Colloidal Crystals Confined Between Two Walls

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Physical Sciences and Mathematics
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Peng, Yi
Wang, Ziren
Alsayed, Ahmed M.
Han, Yilong
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Video microscopy is employed to study the melting behaviors of multilayer colloidal crystals composed of diameter-tunable microgel spheres confined between two walls.We systematically explore film thickness effects on the melting process and on the phase behaviors of single crystal and polycrystalline films. Thick films (>4 layers) are observed to melt heterogeneously, while thin films ( ≤ 4 layers) melt homogeneously, even for polycrystalline films. Grain-boundary melting dominates other types of melting processes in polycrystalline films thicker than 12 layers. The heterogeneous melting from dislocations is found to coexist with grain-boundary melting in films between 5- and 12-layers. In dislocation melting, liquid nucleates at dislocations and forms lakelike domains embedded in the larger crystalline matrix; the “lakes” are observed to diffuse, interact, merge with each other, and eventually merge with large strips of liquid melted from grain boundaries. Thin film melting is qualitatively different: thin films homogeneously melt by generating many small defects which need not nucleate at grain boundaries or dislocations. For three- and four-layer thin films, different layers are observed to have the same melting point, but surface layers melt faster than bulk layers. Within our resolution, two- to four-layer films appear to melt in one step, while monolayers melt in two steps with an intermediate hexatic phase.

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2011-01-25
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Suggested Citation: Y. Peng, Z.-R. Wang, A.M. Alsayed, A.G. Yodh and Y. Han. (2011). "Melting of multilayer colloidal crystals confined between two walls." Physical Review E. 83, 011404. © 2011 The American Physical Society http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.011404.
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