Kinetic roughening of aggregates of patchy colloids with strong and weak bonds

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the roughness of colloid film interfaces changes from KPZ to KPZQ universality classes due to the disparity between strong and weak bonds in patchy colloids, revealing a crossover in growth behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the crossover from KPZ to KPZQ universality in colloid aggregation driven by bond strength differences.

Findings

Identified the crossover point between KPZ and KPZQ regimes.

Calculated critical exponents for the interface roughening.

Demonstrated the impact of bond strength disparity on universality class transition.

Abstract

We study the irreversible aggregation of films of patchy spherical colloids with directional and selective interactions. We report a crossover of the interfacial roughening from the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) to the KPZ with quenched disorder (KPZQ) universality class when the difference between the strong and weak bonds is sufficiently large. We calculate the critical exponents and identify the crossover between the two regimes.