title: High-bandwidth viscoelastic properties of aging colloidal glasses and gels.
abstract: We report measurements of the frequency-dependent shear moduli of aging colloidal systems that evolve from a purely low-viscosity liquid to a predominantly elastic glass or gel. Using microrheology, we measure the local complex shear modulus G;{*}(omega) over a very wide range of frequencies (from 1Hzto100kHz ). The combined use of one- and two-particle microrheology allows us to differentiate between colloidal glasses and gels-the glass is homogenous, whereas the colloidal gel shows a considerable degree of heterogeneity on length scales larger than 0.5microm . Despite this characteristic difference, both systems exhibit similar rheological behaviors which evolve in time with aging, showing a crossover from a single-power-law frequency dependence of the viscoelastic modulus to a sum of two power laws. The crossover occurs at a time t_{0} , which defines a mechanical transition point. We found that the data acquired during the aging of different samples can be collapsed onto a single master curve by scaling the aging time with t_{0} . This raises questions about the prior interpretation of two power laws in terms of a superposition of an elastic network embedded in a viscoelastic background.
authors.affiliation: van der Waals-Zeeman Institut, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1018XE Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jabbari-Farouji
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Atakhorrami
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mizuno
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Eiser
authors.forename: G H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Wegdam
authors.forename: F C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Mackintosh
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bonn
authors.forename: C F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Schmidt