Advanced Materials, Vol.16, No.14, 1204-1204, 2004
Colloidal clusters of silica or polymer microspheres
An emulsion encapsulation and shrinkage technique for producing large quantities of colloidally stable clusters of microspheres (see Figure) is demonstrated. In spite of differences in particle properties and interactions, the sequence of cluster packings remains the same for three different systems, suggesting that the sphere-packing process can be successfully applied to a wide range of colloidal materials.