Z-shaped dejamming phase diagram of colloidal gels

Abstract

For physically gelled colloidal suspensions, there are two routes to transform the gel from solid to liquid. One is to raise the temperature, and the other is to increase the shear deformation. In this investigation, we found that the phase boundary of this solid-to-liquid transformation exhibits a surprising Z-shaped curve in the strain-temperature plane. This nonmonotonic feature in phase transition appears to be present in various nanoparticle-filled colloidal gels with significant differences in chemical composition, filler type, structure, particle shape, average diameter, and particle size distribution. By applying the Kraus model to the breakage and restoration of filler networks and comparing our findings to nonequilibrium glassy behavior, we found that this nonmonotonic phenomenon can be theoretically predicted by combining the glassy melting kinetics of filler networks at high temperatures with the viscosity-retarded dissociation between particles at low temperatures.