Charged colloids as model systems for metals

Due to their mesoscopic length scales, colloidal suspensions are ideal model systems to address fundamental issues in condensed matter physics such as liquid ordering, nucleation and crystallization. Colloidal particles are several orders of magnitude larger than atoms in metals and their relaxation behavior is very sluggish compared to atomic systems. Due to the possibility of tunable interaction, systematic investigations of nucleation and the short-range order in a charged colloidal silica system far from equilibrium state are discussed in the present work. The results of these investigations are compared to measurements of metallic systems.

Autorentext

Study of physics at the University of Cologne, since 2006research associate at the Institute of Materials Physics in Spaceof the German Aerospace Center in Cologne; research activitiesare focused on fundamental research on colloids also in zerogravity, 2009 doctorate in natural sciences