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

Thu 811:10-14:00P7.109Grain boundaries in two-dimensional colloidal crystals:fluctuations and glassy dynamicsThomas Skinner, 1 Dirk Aarts, 1 and Roel Dullens 11 University of Oxford, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, South Parks Road OX1 3QZ,Oxford, United KingdomThe physical properties of materials are influenced by their microstructure: grain size distributionand orientation. The nature of grain boundaries, their motion and evolution, is therefore of fundamentalimportance in material science. The intrinsic slowness of colloidal systems and theiranalogy to atomic systems makes them an excellent model system to study grain boundaries inreal space and time. Here, optical microscopy is used to analyse grain boundary fluctuations intwo-dimensional colloidal crystals. Static and dynamic correlation functions are compared withcapillary wave theory to calculate the grain boundary properties [1]. These fundamental propertiesof grain boundaries determine the kinetics of curvature-driven grain growth. In addition, we analysethe dynamics of the grain boundary particles [2] and show them to display behaviour similarto glass-forming liquids as seen in simulation [3].[1] Thomas Skinner*, Dirk Aarts, and Roel Dullens, Grain-Boundary Fluctuations in Two-Dimensional Colloidal Crystals, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 168301 (2010).[2] Thomas Skinner*, Dirk Aarts, and Roel Dullens, Glassy dynamics of grain boundary particlesin two-dimensional colloidal crystals, Submitted (2011).[3] Hao Zhang, David Srolovitz, Jack Douglas, and James A. Warren, Grain boundaries exhibit thedynamics of glass-forming liquids, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106:7735-7740 (2009).109