The effect of polydispersity on the crystallization of hard spherical colloids

Abstract

To crystallize, spherical colloidal particles must not have too broad a spread of size (or polydispersity). Here it is pointed out that the findings of recent calculations and computer simulations concerning the effects of polydispersity on the crystallization of hard spherical particles are simplified considerably if cast in terms of a universal index of polydispersity. A simple model is shown to give a similar result. We find the crystallization of such a colloidal suspension is suppressed when the polydispersity, defined as the standard deviation of the particle size distribution divided by its mean, exceeds a critical value which lies in the range 6 to 12 %