Kinetic pathways of the Nematic-Isotropic phase transition as studied by confocal microscopy on rod-like viruses

We investigate the kinetics of phase separation for a mixture of rodlike viruses (fd) and polymer (dextran), which effectively constitutes a system of attractive rods. This dispersion is quenched from a flow-induced fully nematic state into the region where the nematic and the isotropic phase coexis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2005-10
Main Authors: Lettinga, M Paul, Kang, Kyongok, Imhof, Arnout, Derks, Didi, Dhont, Jan K G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Demixing
Nucleation
Phase separation
Phase transitions
Spinodal decomposition
Viruses
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We investigate the kinetics of phase separation for a mixture of rodlike viruses (fd) and polymer (dextran), which effectively constitutes a system of attractive rods. This dispersion is quenched from a flow-induced fully nematic state into the region where the nematic and the isotropic phase coexist. We show experimental evidence that the kinetic pathway depends on the overall concentration. When the quench is made at high concentrations, the system is meta-stable and we observe typical nucleation-and-growth. For quenches at low concentration the system is unstable and the system undergoes a spinodal decomposition. At intermediate concentrations we see the transition between both demixing processes, where we locate the spinodal point.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.0510178