A colloidal particle placed in an inhomogeneous solution of smaller nonadsorbing polymers will move towards regions of lower polymer concentration in order to reduce the free energy of the interface between the surface of the particle and the solution. This phenomenon is known as diffusiophoresis. Treating the polymer as penetrable hard spheres, as in the Asakura-Oosawa model, a simple analytic expression for the diffusiophoretic drift velocity can be obtained. In the context of drying films we show that diffusiophoresis by this mechanism can lead to stratification under easily accessible experimental conditions. By stratification we mean spontaneous formation of a layer of polymer on top of a layer of the colloid. Transposed to the case of binary colloidal mixtures, this offers an explanation for the stratification observed recently in these systems [A. Fortini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 118301 (2016)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.116.118301]. Our results emphasize the importance of treating solvent dynamics explicitly in these problems and caution against the neglect of hydrodynamic interactions or the use of implicit solvent models in which the absence of solvent backflow results in an unbalanced osmotic force that gives rise to large but unphysical effects.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 January 2018.
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#10,185,007
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Outputs from Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
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#142,134
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Outputs of similar age from Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
#37
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Altmetric has tracked 34,377,743 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 24,695 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 492,598 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 373 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its contemporaries.
