DYNAMIC LIGHT-SCATTERING STUDY OF THE GLASS-TRANSITION IN A COLLOIDAL SUSPENSION

This paper describes a light-scattering study of the glass transition in nonaqueous suspensions of sterically stabilized colloidal spheres. The observed phase behavior, fluid, crystal, and glass, is consistent with an essentially hard-sphere interaction between the particles. Metastable fluid states were obtained upon shear melting the crystalline phases by tumbling the samples. Their intermediate scattering functions, measured by dynamic light scattering, showed the emergence of a nondecaying component, implying structural arrest, at essentially the same concentration as that at which homogeneously nucleated crystallization was no longer observed. The overall forms of the intermediate scattering functions are consistent with the predictions of mode-coupling theories for the glass transition. Supplementary studies of the static structure factors indicated only short-ranged spatial order for particle concentrations ranging from the equilibrium fluid through the metastable fluid to the glass.