In summary, we have developed a new strategy for the fabrication of arrayed colloidal particles well-ordered nanometric holes of three or four fold symmetry by anisotropic reactive ion (plasma) etching of self-organized layers of colloidal spheres. We demonstrated that a mesoporous silica matrix with regular open windows could be used as a lithographic mask and the resulting arrangement of pore...

Previous experiments have shown that spherical colloidal particles relax to equilibrium slowly after they adsorb to a liquid-liquid interface, despite the large interfacial energy gradient driving the adsorption. The slow relaxation has been explained in terms of transient pinning and depinning of the contact line on the surface of the particles. However, the nature of the pinning sites has not...

Colloidal particles interacting via a long-range repulsion can, in contrast to hard-sphere systems, exhibit crystalline ordering at low volume fraction. Here we experimentally investigate the structure and properties of such "colloidal Wigner crystals." We find a body-centered-cubic crystalline phase at volume fractions of ϕ≳15%, which exhibits large fluctuations of individual particles from th...

A new source of attraction between similarly charged colloidal particles in ordered suspensions is considered. The attractive force is due to the correlation between the fluctuating displacements of the colloidal particles from their equilibrium positions in the colloid crystal lattice. The effective charge of a particle, the eigenfrequency and the energy of attraction are calculated on the bas...

A review is given of liquid crystals formed in colloidal dispersions, in particular those consisting of mineral particles. Starting with the historical development and early theory, the characteristic properties related to the colloidal nature of this type of liquid crystals are discussed. The possibility to find biaxial nematic and smectic phases is described for mixtures of rods and plates an...

We study aging in a colloidal suspension consisting of micron-sized particles in a liquid. This system is made glassy by increasing the particle concentration. We observe samples composed of particles of two sizes, with a size ratio of 1:2.1 and a volume fraction ratio 1:6, using fast laser scanning confocal microscopy. This technique yields real-time, three-dimensional movies deep inside the c...

We study aging in a colloidal suspension consisting of micron-sized particles in a liquid. This system is made glassy by increasing the particle concentration. We observe samples composed of particles of two sizes, with a size ratio of 1 : 2.1 and a volume fraction ratio 1 : 6, using fast laser scanning confocal microscopy. This technique yields real-time, three-dimensional movies deep inside t...

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy is performed on glassy systems of poly(methylmethacrylate) colloidal particles in density- and refractive-index-matched solvents. Samples are prepared with varying amounts of linear polystyrene, which induces a depletion driven attraction between the nearly hard-sphere particles. Images collected over several hours confirm the existence of a reen...

A study has been conducted to investigate the effect of loading rates on membrane fouling in a moving bed biofilm membrane reactor process for municipal wastewater treatment, especially analysing the fate of submicron colloidal particles and their influence on membrane fouling. Two operating conditions defined as low and high organic loading rates were tested where the development and fate of t...

Biological cells can be treated as an inhomogeneous particle. In addition to biomaterials, inhomogeneous particles are also important in more traditional colloidal science. By using two energy methods that are based on Legendre polynomials and Green’s function, respectively, we investigate the interaction between biological cells or colloidal particles in the presence of an external electric fi...