TY - JOUR
T1 - Activated surface diffusion in a simple colloid system
AU - Kim, Minsu
AU - Anthony, Stephen M.
AU - Granick, Steve
PY - 2009/4/30
Y1 - 2009/4/30
N2 - We investigate, from single-particle tracking of jumps, the cluster configurations that allow hopping over a geometric activation barrier in surface diffusion. Spherical colloidal particles, their dimers, and their isomeric planar trimers are compared on hexagonal surface lattices commensurate with the elemental size of one particle. The experiments reveal that translational and rotational mobility depend on the shape of these clusters, not only on their mass, because the jump process favors a restricted family of cluster configurations. The resulting strong decoupling between rotation and translation demonstrates the limitations of a naïve Arrhenius picture, even for a simple gravitational potential.
AB - We investigate, from single-particle tracking of jumps, the cluster configurations that allow hopping over a geometric activation barrier in surface diffusion. Spherical colloidal particles, their dimers, and their isomeric planar trimers are compared on hexagonal surface lattices commensurate with the elemental size of one particle. The experiments reveal that translational and rotational mobility depend on the shape of these clusters, not only on their mass, because the jump process favors a restricted family of cluster configurations. The resulting strong decoupling between rotation and translation demonstrates the limitations of a naïve Arrhenius picture, even for a simple gravitational potential.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.178303
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.178303
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:67650302032
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 102
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 17
M1 - 178303
ER -