Unsticking a colloidal glass, and sticking it again

Abstract

We study glass formation in hard spheres with short-range attraction. The system consists of nearly-hard-sphere polymethylmethacrylate particles and non-adsorbing random-coil polystyrene which induced a depletion attraction between the particles. The experiments reveal a re-entrant glass transition and two qualitatively distinct glassy states. Dynamic light scattering, covering eleven orders of magnitude in time, gives insight into the kinds of particle motion responsible for these observations. The possible relevance of our results to generic issues, such as the distinction between fragile and strong glass formers, the nature of the underlying 'free energy landscape', and the relative importance of temperature and pressure, is discussed.