Abstract
Three-dimensional ordered colloidal systems with lattice constants comparable to the wavelength of visible light might find important application as photonic crystals1, optic filters and switches2, and chemical sensors3. Colloidal crystallization has been actively studied4,5,6,7,8, leading to the development of several methods to control the self-assembly of the colloidal particles; examples include colloidal epitaxy9 and space-based reduced-gravity techniques10,11. Here we report a method to control the nucleation and growth of hard-sphere colloidal crystals that relies on the use of temperature gradients to define a density gradient. This is somewhat counterintuitive as temperature does not play a role in determining the hard-sphere phase diagram. We obtain hard-sphere single crystals (size ∼3 mm) from a sample in a concentration regime that would remain in the liquid state in the absence of a temperature gradient. We expect the method to have applications in controlling the ordering and growth of various ‘soft’ systems including colloids, copolymers, emulsions and proteins.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Joannopoulos,J. D., Villeneuve,P. R. & Fan,S. Photonic crystals: putting a new twist on light. Nature 386, 143–149 (1997).
Pan,G., Kesavamoorthy,R. & Asher,S. A. Optically nonlinear Bragg diffracting nanosecond optical switches. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3860–3863 (1997).
Holtz,J. H. & Asher,S. A. Polymerized colloidal crystal hydrogel films as intelligent chemical sensing materials. Nature 389, 829–832 (1997).
Pusey,P. N. & van Megen,W. Phase behavior of concentrated suspensions of nearly hard colloidal spheres. Nature 320, 340–342 (1986).
Pusey,P. N. in Liquids, Freezing and the Glass Transition Ch. 10 (eds Hansen, J. P., Levesque, D. & Zinn-Justin, J.) 763–942 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991).
Poon,W. C. K. & Pusey,P. N. in Observation, Prediction and Simulation of Phase Transitions in Complex Fluids (eds Baus, M., Rull, L. F. & Ryckaert, J. P.) 3–51 (Kluwer Academic, Boston, 1995).
Dinsmore,A. D., Crocker,J. C. & Yodh,A. G. Self-assembly of colloidal crystals. Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sci. 3, 5–11 (1998).
Grier,D. G. (ed.) From dynamics to device: directed self-assembly of colloidal materials. MRS Bull. 23 (10), 21–50 (1998).
van Blaaderen,A., Ruel,R. & Wiltzius,P. Template-directed colloidal crystallization. Nature 385, 321–324 (1997).
Zhu,J. et al. Crystallization of hard-sphere colloids in microgravity. Nature 387, 883–885 (1997).
Cheng,Z. Colloidal Hard Sphere Crystallization and Glass Transition. Thesis, Princeton Univ. (1998).
Hoover,E. G. & Ree,F. H. Melting transition and communal entropy for hard spheres. J. Chem. Phys. 49, 3609–3617 (1968).
Woodcock,L. V. Glass transition in the hard sphere model and Kauzmann's paradox. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 371, 274–298 (1981).
Phan,S.-E. et al. Phase transition, equation of state, and limiting shear viscosities of hard sphere dispersions. Phys. Rev. E 54, 6633–6645 (1996).
Underwood,S. M., Taylor,J. R. & van Megen,W. Sterically stabilized colloidal particles as model hard spheres. Langmuir 10, 3550–3354 (1994).
Woodcock,L. V. Entropy difference between the face-centred cubic and hexagonal close-packed crystal structures. Nature 385, 141–143 (1997).
Bolhuis,P. G. et al. Entropy difference between crystal phases. Nature 388, 235–236 (1997).
Pronk,S. & Frenkel,D. Can stacking faults in hard-sphere crystals anneal out spontaneously? J. Chem. Phys. 110, 4589–4592 (1999).
Mau,S-C. & Huse,D. A. Stacking entropy of hard-sphere crystals. Phys. Rev. E 59, 4396–4401 (1999).
Pusey,P. N. et al. Structure of crystals of hard colloidal spheres. Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 2753–2756 (1989).
Russel,W. B. et al. Dendritic growth of hard sphere crystals. Langmuir 13, 3871–3881 (1997).
He,Y., Olivier,B. & Ackerson,B. J. Morphology of crystals made of hard spheres. Langmuir 13, 1408–1412 (1997).
Hurd,A. J. et al. Lattice dynamics of colloidal crystals. Phys. Rev. A 26, 2869–2881 (1982).
Derksen,J. & Van de Water,W. Hydrodynamics of colloidal crystals. Phys. Rev. A 45, 5660–5673 (1992).
Pradhan,R. D. et al. Photonic band structure of bcc colloidal crystals. Phys. Rev. B 55, 9503–9507 (1997).
Tarhan,I. I. & Watson,G. H. Photonic band structure of fcc colloidal crystals. Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 315–318 (1996).
Carnahan,N. F. & Starling,K. E. Equation of state for nonattracting rigid sphere. J. Chem. Phys. 51, 635–636 (1969).
Hall,K. R. Another hard-sphere equation of state. J. Chem. Phys. 57, 2252–2254 (1972).
Guinier,A. X-ray Diffraction (Freeman, San Francisco, 1963).
Sanders,J. V. Diffraction of light by opals. Acta Crystallogr. A 24, 427–434 (1968).
Acknowledgements
We thank D. Huse and P. Ségre for discussions. This work was supported by the NASA Microgravity Sciences program.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cheng, Z., Russel, W. & Chaikin, P. Controlled growth of hard-sphere colloidal crystals. Nature 401, 893–895 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/44785
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/44785
This article is cited by
-
Unified explanation for self-assembly of polymer-brush-modified nanoparticles in ionic liquids
Polymer Journal (2023)
-
Design of three-dimensional isotropic negative-refractive-index metamaterials with wideband response based on an effective-medium approach
Applied Physics A (2022)
-
High-resolution combinatorial patterning of functional nanoparticles
Nature Communications (2020)
-
Packing ovals in optimized regular polygons
Journal of Global Optimization (2020)
-
Tunable self-healing of magnetically propelling colloidal carpets
Nature Communications (2019)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.