Objective
Charged colloidal suspensions are valuable model systems to study universal laws of statistical, atomic and surface physics. The most important interaction determining the equilibrium properties in such systems is electrostatics. Its highly non-linear character gives rise to many-body interactions, leading to nontrivial results deviating from predictions of the simple pairwise additive theories.
In this proposal we suggest to study 2D colloidal crystals, explore the many-body effects on the stability of different lattices and define macroscopic quantities whose behaviour cannot be explained with simple pair picture. We want to study the melting of 2D crystals, as well as cluster formation and nucleation. The results from such 2D analysis will be important contribution to understanding structures and domain formation in atomic surface layers.
Further, we wish to advance the Poisson-Boltzmann simulation technique to treat objects with shape and charge anisotropy. One important application of this will be calculation of the interactions between DNA molecules, where many-body effects are expected as well and studying the full many-body phase diagram of DNA assemblies.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesphysical sciencescondensed matter physicssoft matter physics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesatomic physics
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsmathematical model
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-MOBILITY-11
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