Nucleation Rate Measurement of Colloidal Crystallization Using Microfluidic Emulsion Droplets
- 17 February 2007
- journal article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in Langmuir
- Vol. 23 (6), 2919-2923
- https://doi.org/10.1021/la063070d
Abstract
An emulsion crystallization method has been demonstrated to measure the nucleation rate of a thermoresponsive colloidal poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAM) system. The colloidal PNIPAM suspension was injected into a microfluidic flow-focusing device to generate monodispersed droplets in oil. The temperature was controlled to fine tune the volume fraction of the PNIPAM particles, and the microfluidic flow rate was varied to change the droplet sizes, thus altering the nucleation volume. Using independent droplets, we can isolate the nucleation events to eliminate the interactions among crystallites that existed in bulk or large droplet systems. Therefore, we were able to carry out accurate nucleation rate measurements of colloidal crystals. This emulsion crystallization method is promising for bridging the gap among theories, simulations, and experiments for nucleation kinetics studies.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Monodisperse Double Emulsions Generated from a Microcapillary DeviceScience, 2005
- Crystallization Kinetics of Thermosensitive Colloids Probed by Transmission SpectroscopyLangmuir, 2004
- Nucleation rates and induction times during colloidal crystallization: Links between models and experimentsPhysical Review E, 2002
- Crystallization Kinetics of Hard Spheres in Microgravity in the Coexistence Regime: Interactions between Growing CrystallitesPhysical Review Letters, 2001
- Prediction of absolute crystal-nucleation rate in hard-sphere colloidsNature, 2001
- Crystallization kinetics of repulsive colloidal spheresJournal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 1999
- Crystallization kinetics of suspensions of hard colloidal spheresPhysical Review E, 1997
- Observation of Accelerated Nucleation in Dense Colloidal Fluids of Hard Sphere ParticlesPhysical Review Letters, 1995
- Intercalation of copper metal clusters in montmorilloniteNature, 1991
- A study of colloidal crystal morphology and orientation via polarizing microscopyLangmuir, 1991