Gulliver’s travels beyond Jonathan Swift: x-ray crystallography of colloidal crystals and colloidal liquid crystals

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• Dr. Andrei Petoukhov, Utrecht University
• Friday 19 February 2010, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Elizabeth Blackburn.

Did you ever dream to be a Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, where people are much smaller than usual? Now imagine that the size difference is not ‘only’ a factor of twelve as it was in the story of Jonathan Swift. Imagine that you can hardly see the Lilliputians since they are thousands times smaller. This is about the difference between ‘ordinary’ atoms (a couple of Angstroms) and colloids (~100 – 1000 nm) we are usually working with. Despite this tremendous size difference, colloids often behave very similar to atoms and molecules and are able to form beautiful colloidal crystals and colloidal liquid crystals. These self-organisation phenomena can significantly affect the properties of the colloidal suspensions and can be used to fabricate novel functional materials. To study them, we extensively use x-ray crystallography. In the talk I shall explain you the challenge originating from the enormous difference between the sizes of the colloidal ‘Gullivers’ and the x-ray wavelength. I shall explain how we manage to meet the challenge using microradian x-ray diffraction. A few recent examples of our studies of colloidal self-assembly will be presented. I shall show that x-rays are able to reveal the crystal structure, long-range order and the presence of various types of disorder.

This talk is part of the Condensed Matter Physics Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Cond. Mat. seminar
• Condensed Matter Physics Seminars
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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