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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 18: SYMPOSIUM Driven Soft Matter III

CPP 18.3: Talk

Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 17:15–17:30, C 130

Dynamic density functional theory of fluids of platelike colloidal particles — •Markus Bier and Rene van Roij — Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Fluids of platelike colloidal particles, e.g., suspensions of clay, exhibit a large range of phenomena such as flocculation, glass transitions, gelation, aging, and even liquid crystal phase transitions because of the interplay between translational and orientational degrees of freedom.

In recent years dynamic density functional theories (DDFT) for simple fluids, i.e., for particles with only translational degrees of freedom, have been derived based on Langevin dynamics, which can be considered as a reasonable description of dilute colloidal dispersions. DDFT is a convenient formalism to describe nonequilibrium configurations of inhomogeneous fluids given one knows a sufficiently precise density functional to descibe the equilibrium behaviour.

We proposed a DDFT for fluids of platelike colloidal particles based on a density functional for platelike colloidal particles within the Zwanzig approximation in order to investigate the relaxation within an external field [M. Bier and R. van Roij, Phys. Rev. E 76, 021405 (2007)] as well as the formation of nonequilibrium steady states under the influence of reservoirs which are not in equilibrium with each other [M. Bier and R. van Roij, submitted (see preprint arxiv:0710.5439v1)]. In this contribution we will briefly motivate the formalism and afterwards report in detail on the numerical findings.