Atomic insight into the solid-liquid interface
How do crystals nucleate and grow at the atomic scale? The interface between a crystal and its melt gives crucial insight into crystal nucleation and growth. However, this interface is prohibitively difficult to image directly at the atomic scale. Vidi-researcher Schall and FOM-PhD Triet Dang of the Institute of Physics* have now succeeded with coworkers to image this interface using colloidal particles that are thousand times larger than atoms. They published their results on 24 June on the cover of the magazine Advanced Materials.
The researchers used novel thermosensitive colloidal particles to grow large colloidal crystals analogous to their atomic counterpart, and obtained three-dimensional images of the interfaces between these crystals and their melt directly at the particle scale. These direct images show how the perfect long-range order and symmetry of the crystal crosses over to the short-range order and symmetry of the liquid, a longstanding question that could not be addressed directly in atomic solids.
* From the beginning of 2011 the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF), the Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam (ITFA), and the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI) for experimental physics merged into one Institute of Physics (IoP).
Information
For further information please contact dr. Peter Schall, Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, University of Amsterdam, telephone +31 (0)20 525 63 14.