(6eg) Dynamic Modeling and Design of Colloidal Assembly

Understanding concentrated colloidal dynamics in the presence of different pairwise interactions and external fields provides a basis to predict the temporal evolution of colloidal microstructures in diverse phenomena including suspension rheology and colloidal assembly. However, a microscopic theory of concentrated colloidal dynamics does not yet exist that rigorously includes both statistical mechanical (configuration dependent free energy changes) and fluid mechanical (configuration dependent multi-body hydrodynamic interactions) contributions. This work shows the implementation of a novel approach to model colloidal assembly by means of analyzing the temporal evolution of microstructures, that can be observed in experiments and simulation, with a small number of order parameters that describe the state of the system. This methodology is used to analyze the structure evolution of isotropic and anisotropic colloidal building blocks. Knowledge of these dynamic models enable the fundamental understanding of assembly systems, as well as the optimization, design and control of assembly systems to produce low-defect colloidal crystals.