DLCA AND LANGEVIN DYNAMICS APPROACHES OF SOL GEL TRANSITION: A COMPARISON VIA THE FRACTAL DIMENSION DURING AGGREGATION

Abstract

We compared two models of aggregation which represent the sol gel transition of base-catalyzed colloidal gels. The two models are a Langevin dynamics approach of this transition and the DLCA model (diffusion limited cluster-cluster aggregation). For large numbers of particles, we compared the fractal dimension of the gelling network via the structure factor of the bulk. We observed that the Langevin dynamics approach did give more realistic fractal dimension than the DLCA model. This is due to the fact that Langevin dynamics evolves as a function of a physical time.