Favored local structures in amorphous colloidal packings measured by microbeam X-ray diffraction

Local structure and symmetry are keys to understanding how a material is formed and the properties it subsequently exhibits. This applies to both crystals and amorphous and glassy materials. In the case of amorphous materials, strong links between processing and history, structure and properties hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2017-09, Vol.114 (39), p.10344-10349
Main Authors: Liu, Amelia C. Y., Tabor, Rico F., de Jonge, Martin D., Mudie, Stephen T., Petersen, Timothy C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Additives
Amorphous materials
Amorphous structure
Centrifugation
Colloids
Correlation analysis
Crystals
Diffraction
Dispersion
Packing
Particle interactions
Physical Sciences
Salts
Sedimentation
Silica
Silicon dioxide
Small angle X ray scattering
Symmetry
X-ray diffraction
X-ray scattering
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Summary:Local structure and symmetry are keys to understanding how a material is formed and the properties it subsequently exhibits. This applies to both crystals and amorphous and glassy materials. In the case of amorphous materials, strong links between processing and history, structure and properties have yet to be made because measuring amorphous structure remains a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate a method to quantify proportions of the bond-orientational order of nearest neighbor clusters [Steinhardt, et al. (1983) Phys Rev B 28:784–805] in colloidal packings by statistically analyzing the angular correlations in an ensemble of scanning transmission microbeam small-angle X-ray scattering (μSAXS) patterns. We show that local order can be modulated by tuning the potential between monodisperse, spherical colloidal silica particles using salt and surfactant additives and that more pronounced order is obtained by centrifugation than sedimentation. The order in the centrifuged glasses reflects the ground state order in the dispersion at lower packing fractions. This diffraction-based method can be applied to amorphous systems across decades in length scale to connect structure to behavior in disordered systems with a range of particle interactions.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1707198114