Entropic patchiness drives multi-phase coexistence in discotic colloid–depletant mixtures

Three-Phase Coexistence in Colloidal Rod-Plate Mixtures.

Aqueous suspensions of clay particles, such as montmorillonite (MMT) platelets and sepiolite (Sep) rods, tend to form gels at concentrations around 1 vol %. For Sep rods, adsorbing sodium polyacrylate to the surface allows for an isotropic-nematic phase separation to be seen instead. Here, MMT is added to such Sep suspensions, resulting in a complex phase behavior. Across a range of clay concen...

Thermodynamic approach to phase coexistence in ternary phospholipid-cholesterol mixtures.

We introduce a simple and predictive model for determining the phase stability of ternary phospholipid-cholesterol mixtures. Assuming that competition between the liquid and gel order of the phospholipids is the main driving force behind lipid segregation, we derive a Gibbs free energy of mixing, based on the thermodynamic properties of the lipids main transition. A numerical approach was devis...

Orientational and phase-coexistence behaviour of hard rod-sphere mixtures

Results are presented from Monte Carlo simulations of bulk mixtures of Hard Gaussian Overlap particles with an aspect ratio of 3:1 and hard spheres with diameters equal to the breadths of the rods. For sphere number-concentrations of 50% and lower, compression of the isotropic fluid results in formation of a homogeneous (i.e. compositionally mixed) nematic phase. The volume fraction of this iso...

Obliquely Tilted Discotic Phase Compensation Films

Entropic Phase Separation

Any elementary textbook on statistical mechanics will try to convince you that energy is everything w.r.t. phase separation. The goal of this thesis is to show otherwise.