The measurement of solid-liquid interfacial energy in colloidal suspensions using grain boundary grooves

作者：Rogers Richard B^*; Ackerson Bruce J

来源：Philosophical Magazine, 2011, 91(5): 682-729.

DOI：10.1080/14786435.2010.527306

• interfacial thermodynamics
• phase boundary
• solid-liquid interfacial energy
• colloid
• hard sphere

Interfacial energy is a fundamental physiochemical property of any multi-phase system. Among the most direct approaches for determining solid-liquid interfacial energy is a technique based on measuring the shape of grain boundary grooves in specimens subjected to a linear temperature gradient. This technique was adapted to crystallizing colloids in a gravitational field. Such colloids exhibit a freezing-melting phase transition and are important not only as self-assembling precursors to photonic crystals, but also as physical models of atomic and molecular systems. The grain boundary groove technique was tested using suspensions of sterically stabilized poly(methyl methacrylate) spheres, which have been shown to closely approximate the hard sphere potential. Whereas isotropic models did not fit grain boundary groove data well, the capillary vector model, which is suitable for both isotropic and anisotropic surface energies, produced gamma(110) = 0.58 +/- 0.05 k(B)T/sigma(2). This value of interfacial energy is in agreement with many of the published values for hard spheres, supporting the validity of our grain boundary groove technique adaptations to colloidal systems in a gravitational field. Finally, kinks observed in groove profiles suggest a minimum anisotropy parameter of epsilon = 0.029 for hard spheres.

• 出版日期2011