The creation of three-dimensional ordered colloidal crystals, for application in a range of nanotechnologies, has been a goal for many researchers in the past few years. The main difficulty in creating macroscopic sized crystals of densely packed colloidal particles is that colloidal particles always have a range of particle sizes - i.e., they are polydisperse. In this paper we study the crystallization kinetics of a hard-sphere colloid with a well defined Gaussian polydispersity. We find that crystallization occurs in two stages, and does not follow the simple classical nucleation picture. We discuss the implications of these results for research into colloidal crystals as possible nano-materials.
展开▼
