Binary mixtures of oppositely charged colloids driven by an electric field are shown to exhibit a nonequilibrium transition towards lane formation if the driving force is increased. Brownian dynamics computer simulations and real-space experiments are employed to study hysteresis effects in an order parameter measuring the extent of lane formation upon increasing and decreasing the driving force. Both from simulation and experiment, we find that lane formation due to electrical fields is continuous. However, simulations show a discontinuous transition if the driving force is gravity.
Single and double paramagnetic colloidal particles are placed above a magnetic square pattern and are driven with an external magnetic field precessing around a high symmetry direction of the pattern. The external magnetic field and that of the pattern confine the colloids into lanes parallel to a lattice vector of the pattern. The precession of the external field causes traveling minima of the magnetic potential along the direction of the lanes. At sufficiently high frequencies of modulation only the doublets respond to the external field and move in direction of the traveling minima along th…
We report numerical results for the effective potential arising between two colloids immersed in a self-assembling cosolute which forms reversible clusters. The potential is evaluated at cosolute state points with different densities and temperatures but with the same connectivity properties. We find that the range of the resulting effective potential is controlled only by the cosolute thermal correlation length rather than by its connectivity length. We discuss the significant differences with previous results focused on cosolute forming irreversible clusters and we show that irreversible bon…
Discontinuous shear-thickening in dense suspensions naturally emerges from the activation of frictional forces by shear flow in non-Brownian systems close to jamming. Yet, this physical picture is incomplete as most experiments study soft colloidal particles subject to thermal fluctuations. To characterise discontinuous shear-thickening in colloidal suspensions we use computer simulations to provide a complete description of the competition between athermal jamming, frictional forces, thermal motion, particle softness, and shear flow. We intentionally neglect hydrodynamics, electrostatics, lub…
Using Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations we investigate a dense system of charged colloids exposed to shear flow in a confined (slit-pore) geometry. The equilibrium system at zero flow consists of three, well-pronounced layers with square-like crystalline in-plane structure. We demonstrate that, for sufficiently large shear rates, the middle layer separates into two sublayers where the particles organize into moving lanes with opposite velocities. The formation of this micro-laned state results in a destruction of the applied shear profile. It has a strong impact not only on the structure of t…
Dynamic particle-scale numerical simulations are used to show that the shear thickening observed in dense colloidal, or Brownian, suspensions is of a similar nature to that observed in non-colloidal suspensions, i.e., a stress-induced transition from a flow of lubricated near-contacting particles to a flow of a frictionally contacting network of particles. Abrupt (or discontinuous) shear thickening is found to be a geometric rather than hydrodynamic phenomenon; it stems from the strong sensitivity of the jamming volume fraction to the nature of contact forces between suspended particles. The t…
Dense suspensions of soft colloidal particles display a broad range of physical and rheological properties which are still far from being fully understood. To elucidate the role of deformability on colloidal flow, we employ computer simulations to measure the apparent viscosity of a system of droplets of variable surface tension subjected to a pressure-driven flow. We confirm that our suspension generically undergoes discontinuous shear thinning, and determine the dependence of the onset of the discontinuity on surface tension. We find that the effective viscosity of the suspension is mainly d…
Two-dimensional systems may admit a hexatic phase and hexatic-liquid transitions of different natures. The determination of their phase diagrams proved challenging, and indeed those of hard-disks, hard regular polygons, and inverse power-law potentials, have been only recently clarified. In this context, the role of attractive forces is currently speculative, despite their prevalence at both the molecular and colloidal scale. Here we demonstrate, via numerical simulations, that attraction promotes a discontinuous melting scenario with no hexatic phase. At high-temperature, Lennard-Jones partic…
Dynamical heterogeneity (DH) in non-equilibrium systems is a topic of profound interest yet an open question. In a model system of constantly driven oppositely charged binary colloidal suspension, we explore DH in a model lane-forming system using BD simulations. We show that the system undergoes structural and dynamical cross-over using spatio-temporal correlation functions. For small field, the structural relaxation is homogeneous while it is heterogeneous for sufficiently high field. In order to explore the heterogeneity, we track and tag the particles to compute partial structures that rel…
Shear thickening is a widespread phenomenon in suspension flow that, despite sustained study, is still the subject of much debate. The longstanding view that shear thickening is due to hydrodynamic clusters has been challenged by recent theory and simulations suggesting that contact forces dominate, not only in discontinuous, but also in continuous shear thickening. Here, we settle this dispute using shear reversal experiments on micron-sized silica and latex colloidal particles to measure directly the hydrodynamic and contact force contributions to shear thickening. We find that contact force…
We investigate numerically the role of spatial arrangement of the patches on the irreversible adsorption of patchy colloids on a substrate. We consider spherical three-patch colloids and study the dependence of the kinetics on the opening angle between patches. We show that growth is suppressed below and above minimum and maximum opening angles, revealing two absorbing phase transitions between thick and thin film regimes. While the transition at the minimum angle is continuous, in the Directed Percolation class, that at the maximum angle is clearly discontinuous. For intermediate values of th…
Mixed-order phase transitions display a discontinuity in the order parameter like first-order transitions yet feature critical behavior like second-order transitions. Such transitions have been predicted for a broad range of equilibrium and nonequilibrium systems, but their experimental observation has remained elusive. Here, we analytically predict and experimentally realize a mixed-order equilibrium phase transition. Specifically, a discontinuous solid-solid transition in a two-dimensional crystal of paramagnetic colloidal particles is induced by a magnetic field $H$. At the transition field…
A solid - amorphous or crystalline - is defined by a finite shear modulus while a fluid lacks such. We thus experimentally investigate the elastic properties of a colloidal glass former near the glass transition: spectroscopy of vibrational excitations yields the dispersion relations of longitudinal and transverse phonons in the glassy state. From the long wavelength limit of the dispersion relation we extract the bulk and the shear modulus. As expected, the latter disappear in a fluid and we measure a clearly resolved discontinuous behaviour of the elastic moduli at the glass transition. This…
Colloidal particles of two types, driven in opposite directions, can segregate into lanes [Vissers et al. Soft Matter 7, 2352 (2011)]. This phenomenon can be reproduced by two-dimensional Brownian dynamics simulations of model particles [Dzubiella et al. Phys. Rev. E 65, 021402 (2002)]. Here we use computer simulation to assess the generality of lane formation with respect to variation of particle type and dynamical protocol. We find that laning results from rectification of diffusion on the scale of a particle diameter: oppositely-driven particles must, in the time taken to encounter each oth…
We combine an analytically solvable mean-field elasto-plastic model with molecular dynamics simulations of a generic glass-former to demonstrate that, depending on their preparation protocol, amorphous materials can yield in two qualitatively distinct ways. We show that well-annealed systems yield in a discontinuous brittle way, as metallic and molecular glasses do. Yielding corresponds in this case to a first-order nonequilibrium phase transition. As the degree of annealing decreases, the first-order character becomes weaker and the transition terminates in a second-order critical point in th…
