Externally driven local colloidal ordering induced by a pointlike heat source

Abstract

We study here how phase transitions are induced in colloidal suspensions by a pointlike heat source, an optically trapped metal-oxide-particle absorbing light. We find that thermophoresis increases the number density of colloids around the oxide particle, leading to the appearance of solid clusters. Our analysis based on thermophoresis reveals that the solid-fluid interface position is purely determined by the relationship of the particle concentration profile in the fluid state with the volume fraction of the phase transition, and no other effect of thermodynamics is seen in the cluster sizes. In this system, we observe the formation of face-centered-cubic crystals, amorphous states, and structures with icosahedral order. This shows a rich possibility of nontrivial orderings under spatially controlled heterogeneous growth in external semisoft potentials that are softer than walls but with substantial variations at the scale of a few particle diameters. Because of the tunable rate of the addition of particles to the clusters, we propose that this method could be used to study the complex interplay of densification with local spatial confinement effects, kinetics, and ordering.