https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2020-11962-y
Regular Article
Phase stability of dispersions of hollow silica nanocubes mediated by non-adsorbing polymers
1
Van ’t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, Padulaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2
Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry & Institute for Complex Molecular Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
* e-mail: r.tuinier@tue.nl
Received:
4
May
2020
Accepted:
28
May
2020
Published online:
19
June
2020
Although there are theoretical predictions (Eur. Phys. J. E 41, 110 (2018)) for the rich-phase behaviour of colloidal cubes mixed with non-adsorbing polymers, a thorough verification of this phase behaviour is still underway; experimental studies on mixtures of cubes and non-adsorbing polymers in bulk are scarce. In this paper, mixtures of hollow silica nanocubes and linear polystyrene in N,-N-dimethylformamide are used to measure the structure factor of the colloidal cubes as a function of non-adsorbing polymer concentration. Together with visual observations these structure factors enabled us to assess the depletion-mediated phase stability of cube-polymer mixtures. The theoretical and experimental phase boundaries for cube-depletant mixtures are in remarkable agreement, despite the simplifications underlying the theory employed.
Key words: Soft Matter: Colloids and Nanoparticles
© The Author(s), 2020