Subdiffusion and the cage effect studied near the colloidal glass transition

By E. Weeks, David A. Weitz. 2001

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The dynamics of a glass-forming material slow greatly near the glass transition, and molecular motion becomes inhibited. We use confocal microscopy to investigate the motion of colloidal particles near the colloidal glass transition. As the concentration in a dense colloidal suspension is increased, particles become confined in transient cages formed by their neighbors. This prevents them from diffusing freely throughout the sample. We quantify the properties of these cages by measuring temporal anticorrelations of the particles’ displacements. The local cage properties are related to the subdiffusive rise of the mean square displacement: over a broad range of time scales, the mean square displacement grows slower than linearly in time.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/85167ea28c0b2378a09937d3dd93b3ddbed09dbe

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Ralf Metzler
2. Cecile Fradin
3. Daniel S. Banks
4. Joseph Klafter
5. E. Weeks
6. Mark M. Meerschaert
7. Enrico Scalas
8. Anatoly N. Kochubei

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. Cecile Fradin
2. Daniel S. Banks
3. Joseph Klafter
4. Ralf Metzler
5. E. Weeks

In Materials Chemistry

1. Cecile Fradin
2. Daniel S. Banks
3. Ralf Metzler
4. D. Semwogerere
5. V. Prasad
6. Joseph Klafter
7. E. Weeks

Citations in the corpus

• Anomalous diffusion of proteins due to molecular crowding. (2005, methodology): “1–1 (81) could be attributed to the fact that our systems are farther away from the glass transition, which can be estimated using the Fox equation (82) to be above fg1⁄4 0.”
• Confocal microscopy of colloids (2007, background): “An asymptotic diffusion coefficient D∞ can be determined from these measurements and is independent of the age of the sample [101, 102].”
• The restaurant at the end of the random walk: recent developments in the description of anomalous transport by fractional dynamics (2004, background): “The subdiffusive phenomenon may in fact be related to caging-caused subdiffusion (Weeks and Weitz 2002, Weeks et al 2000).”