Phase Behaviour of Colloidal Cubes Mixed with Depletants

Abstract

AbstractIn Chaps. 8 and 9 it was shown that the phase behaviour of anisotropic hard particles is considerably richer than that of hard spheres (see Sect. 3.2). Recent breakthroughs in colloidal synthesis allow the control of particle shapes and properties with high precision. This provides us with a constantly expanding library of new anisotropic building blocks, thus opening new avenues to explore colloidal self-assembly at a higher level of complexity [1, 2]. One of these intriguing novel systems is cube-like colloids. In this chapter, a selective overview is given on the current knowledge of the phase behaviour of cube-like colloids with and without added depletants.