8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

Wed 711:10-14:00P5.41Competition between bicontinuous and mixed gels in apatchy colloidal modelDaniel de las Heras, 1 José M. Tavares, 1 and Margarida M. Telo da Gama 11 CFTC, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 2, P-1749-016, Lisbon,PortugalUsing Wertheim’s first order perturbation theory and a generalization of Flory-Stockmayer’s theoryof polymerization, we have investigated the phase diagram, self-assembly and percolation thresholdof a binary mixture of patchy colloidal particles. The particles are modelled as hard sphereswith three bonding sites of two different types for each species (2A+1C for species 1 and 2B+1Dfor species 2). We have found a very rich phenomenology, including a competition between bicontinuousand mixed gels. In the former case, each species forms a percolated network, and bothnetworks are interpenetrating [A. Goyal et al, Soft Matter 6, 480 (2010)], whereas in the latter,there is only one percolated network formed by cross-linked chains of particles of both species.41