Structural characterisation of polycrystalline colloidal monolayers in the presence of aspherical impurities

TL;DR

This study examines how aspherical impurities affect the structure of colloidal monolayers, revealing that impurities induce local lattice deformations, increase defects, and reduce grain size, thereby altering the material's overall order and entropy.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of impurity-induced structural changes in colloidal monolayers, highlighting the relationship between impurity concentration and polycrystalline grain size.

Findings

Impurities cause local lattice deformation near their vicinity.

Higher impurity concentration increases defect density and reduces overall order.

Impurity concentration determines the size of polycrystalline grains.

Abstract

Impurities in crystalline materials introduce disorder into an otherwise ordered structure due to the formation of lattice defects and grain boundaries. The properties of the resulting polycrystal can differ remarkably from those of the ideal single crystal. Here we investigate a quasi-two-dimensional system of colloidal spheres containing a small fraction of aspherical impurities and characterise the resulting polycrystalline monolayer. We find that, in the vicinity of an impurity, the underlying hexagonal lattice is deformed due to a preference for 5-fold co-ordinated particles adjacent to impurities. This results in a reduction in local hexagonal ordering around an impurity. Increasing the concentration of impurities leads to an increase in the number of these defects and consequently a reduction in system-wide hexagonal ordering and a corresponding increase in entropy as measured from the distribution of Voronoi cell areas. Furthermore, through both considering orientational correlations and directly identifying crystalline domains we observe a decrease in the average polycrystalline grain size on increasing the concentration of impurities. Our data show that, for the concentrations considered, local structural modifications due to the presence of impurities are independent of their concentration, while structure on longer lengthscales (i.e. the size of polycrystalline grains) is determined by the impurity concentration.