Monte Carlo Simulation of Cylinders with Short-Range Attractions

Published

September 12, 2018

Author(s)

Harold W. Hatch, Nathan Mahynski, R. P. Murphy, Marco Blanco, Vincent K. Shen

Abstract

Cylindrical or rod-like particles are promising materials for the applications of fillers in nanocomposite ma- terials and additives to control rheological properties of colloidal suspensions. Recent advances in particle synthesis allows for cylinders to be synthesized with short-ranged attractions to study the gelation as a func- tion of packing fraction, aspect ratio and temperature. In order to aid in the interpretation of the small-angle scattering experimental results over this wide range of conditions, computer simulation methods were used to model these particles with specialized Monte Carlo algorithms and optimized superquadric potentials. The attractive interaction between neighboring rods increases with the amount of locally- accessible surface area, thus leading to a patchy anisotropic interaction. We find that the cylinders form homogenous fluids, clusters, gels or glasses as a function of the attraction strength, volume fraction and aspect ratio.

Citation

The Journal of Chemical Physics

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Anisotropic colloids, rods, self-assembly, computer simulation Research category, Physics, Chemistry->Theroetical chemistry and modeling

Citation

Hatch, H. , Mahynski, N. , , R. , Blanco, M. and Shen, V. (2018), Monte Carlo Simulation of Cylinders with Short-Range Attractions, The Journal of Chemical Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925719 (Accessed November 21, 2024)