title: Scaling of the viscoelasticity of weakly attractive particles
abstract: The rheological data of weakly attractive colloidal particles are shown to exhibit a surprising scaling behavior as the particle volume fraction, straight phi, or the strength of the attractive interparticle interaction, U, are varied. There is a critical onset of a solid network as either straight phi or U increase above critical values. For all solidlike samples, both the frequency-dependent linear viscoelastic moduli, and the strain-rate dependent stress can be scaled onto universal master curves. A model of a solid network interspersed in a background fluid qualitatively accounts for this behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and DEAS, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Trappe
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Weitz