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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Colloidal self-assembly is often driven by electrostatic interactions. The solvent and colloids typically have different dielectric constants, thereby inducing polarization charge at the colloid surfaces. A shortcoming of previous simulations of charged colloids with implicit solvent is the neglect of the multi-body interactions mediated by polarization charge. I introduce a molecular dynamics simulation method that calculates the polarization charge at each time step. In simulations of weakly charged colloid mixtures with large size asymmetry, dielectric effects are found to modify the pair correlation function in a curious way and, at low temperatures, control the observed crystal structures.
Host: Peter Loxley, loxley@lanl.gov