Interactions between particles with an undulated contact line at a fluid interface: Capillary multipoles of arbitrary order

A colloidal particle adsorbed at a fluid interface could have an undulated, or irregular contact line in the presence of surface roughness and/or chemical inhomogeneity. The contact-line undulations produce distortions in the surrounding liquid interface, whose overlap engenders capillary interactio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of colloid and interface science 2005-07, Vol.287 (1), p.121-134
Main Authors: Danov, Krassimir D., Kralchevsky, Peter A., Naydenov, Boris N., Brenn, Günter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capillary force between particles
Capillary multipoles
Colloid particles—self-assembly
Interfacial rheology
Particles at interfaces
Particulate monolayers
Pickering emulsions
Surface shear elasticity
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Summary:A colloidal particle adsorbed at a fluid interface could have an undulated, or irregular contact line in the presence of surface roughness and/or chemical inhomogeneity. The contact-line undulations produce distortions in the surrounding liquid interface, whose overlap engenders capillary interaction between the particles. The convex and concave local deviations of the meniscus shape from planarity can be formally treated as positive and negative “capillary charges,” which form “capillary multipoles.” Here, we derive theoretical expressions for the interaction between two capillary multipoles of arbitrary order. Depending on the angle of mutual orientation, the interaction energy could exhibit a minimum, or it could represent a monotonic attraction. For undulation amplitudes larger than 5 nm, the interaction energy is typically much greater than the thermal energy kT. As a consequence, a monolayer from capillary multipoles exhibits considerable shear elasticity, and such monolayer is expected to behave as a two-dimensional elastic solid. These theoretical results could be helpful for the understanding of phenomena related to aggregation and ordering of particles adsorbed at a fluid interface, and for the interpretation of rheological properties of particulate monolayers. Related research fields are the particle-stabilized (Pickering) emulsions and the two-dimensional self-assembly of microscopic particles.
ISSN:0021-9797
1095-7103
DOI:10.1016/j.jcis.2005.01.079