Phase Behaviour of Colloidal Platelet–Depletant Mixtures

Abstract

AbstractColloidal platelets are encountered in a wide range of systems in nature and technology. Examples are hydroxides , smectiteclays and exfoliated inorganic nanosheets. Suspensions of these platelets have been found to exhibit liquid crystal ordering, including gibbsite [1–4], nickel hydroxide [5], layered double hydroxides [6, 7], nontronite [8–10], beidellite [11, 12], fluorohectorite [13, 14], solid phosphatoantimonate acid [15, 16], zirconium phosphate [17–19], niobate [20, 21] and titanate [22].