SELF-ORGANISATION IN 2D SYSTEMS OF RODLIKE PARTICLES

Nikolai Lebovka (Personal webpage) and Yuri Tarasevich

Different examples of self-organisation of rod-like particles on a 2D plane are analysed. The lattice and continuous problems are presented. The particles are deposited onto the plane by the random sequential adsorption mechanism. The self-organisation can be driven by adsorption, Brownian motions and vertical drying processes. In continuum problems the particles represent widthless sticks (line segments with zero area). In lattice problems the particles represents the linear k-mers. The stages of self-organisation reflecting destruction of the initial state, development of intermediate stages, continuous cluster coarsening and labyrinth pattern formation are represented. The formation of diagonal stripe domains for lattice problem is analyzed. The anisotropy of electrical conductivity and percolation in films of partially oriented systems are analyzed. Additionally, the effects of defects on the behavior of electrical conductivity are considered. Finally, studies on the continuous 2D problem of the vertical drying of colloidal suspension containing sticks accounting for both the translational and rotational motions are presented. For completely dried films, the spatial distributions of the sticks, the order parameters and the electrical conductivities of the films in both the horizontal and vertical directions were examined.

The details of evaporation-driven self-assembly and stratification of the sticks in the vertical direction are discussed.