Impeded structural relaxation of a hard-sphere colloidal suspension under confinement.
The phenomenon of glass transition, such as the anomalous divergence in viscosity without apparent structural change, remains inadequately understood. We employ spatial confinement to probe length scale dependence on structural relaxation and concomitant glassy dynamics of a hard-sphere poly-(methyl methacrylate) colloidal suspension via confocal microscopy. Remarkable film thickness dependent scaling behavior is observed, where the mobility and relaxation processes of a "fluid" suspension are found to be significantly impeded as film thickness is reduced below 15-20 particle layers.
Sarangapani
Prasad S
PS
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA.
Zhu
Yingxi
Y