title: Range effect on percolation threshold and structural properties for short-range attractive spheres.
abstract: Percolation or aggregation in colloidal system is important in many fields of science and technology. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the percolation behavior for systems consisting of spheres interacting with short-range square-well (SRSW) which mimic colloidal particles, with different interaction ranges. We specifically focus on how the interaction range affects the percolation thresholds in the supercritical region. We find that the contact percolation boundaries are strongly dependent on the interaction ranges of SRSW, especially away from the liquid-liquid critical point. However, varying the interaction ranges of SRSW does not affect much the structure along percolation boundaries especially for low packing fractions. For instance, along the percolation boundary, distributions of coordination number show convergence, and distributions of cluster size are universal for different interaction ranges considered. In addition, either the bond percolation boundaries or isolines of average bond coordination number collapse to those for Baxter sticky model on phase diagram, which confirms the extended law of corresponding states.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 15 Beisihuanxi Road, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Jiachen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: International Center for Quantum Materials and School of Physics, Peking University, No. 5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Limei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 15 Beisihuanxi Road, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Song
mesh_terms: D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation