Adsorption Trajectories and Free-Energy Separatrices for Colloidal Particles in Contact with a Liquid-Liquid Interface

TL;DR

This paper uses a novel tessellation technique to compute free energies of anisotropic colloids at interfaces, analyzing how initial orientation influences adsorption trajectories through simplified Langevin dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces the application of a triangular tessellation method to study free-energy landscapes for colloids at liquid-liquid interfaces, highlighting orientation-dependent adsorption dynamics.

Findings

Adsorption trajectories vary significantly with initial orientation.

The free-energy landscape reveals multiple stable and metastable states.

Orientation strongly influences the adsorption process.

Abstract

We apply the recently developed triangular tessellation technique as presented in [J. de Graaf et al., Phys. Rev. E 80, 051405 (2009)] to calculate the free energy associated with the adsorption of anisotropic colloidal particles at a flat interface. From the free-energy landscape, we analyze the adsorption process, using a simplified version of Langevin dynamics. The present result is a first step to understand the time-dependent behavior of colloids near interfaces. This study shows a wide range of adsorption trajectories, where the emphasis lies on a strong dependence of the dynamics on the orientation of the colloid at initial contact with the interface. We believe that the observed orientational dependence in our simple model can be recovered in suitable experimental systems.