Ma Zheng, Lomba Enrique, Torquato Salvatore
Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Instituto de Química Física Rocasolano, CSIC, Calle Serrano 119, E-28006 Madrid, Spain.
Phys Rev Lett. 2020 Aug 7;125(6):068002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.068002.
The creation of disordered hyperuniform materials with extraordinary optical properties (e.g., large complete photonic band gaps) requires a capacity to synthesize large samples that are effectively hyperuniform down to the nanoscale. Motivated by this challenge, we propose a feasible equilibrium fabrication protocol using binary paramagnetic colloidal particles confined in a 2D plane. The strong and long-ranged dipolar interaction induced by a tunable magnetic field is free from screening effects that attenuate long-ranged electrostatic interactions in charged colloidal systems. Specifically, we numerically find a family of optimal size ratios that makes the two-phase system effectively hyperuniform. We show that hyperuniformity is a general consequence of low isothermal compressibilities, which makes our protocol suitable to treat more general systems with other long-ranged interactions, dimensionalities, and/or polydispersity. Our methodology paves the way to synthesize large photonic hyperuniform materials that function in the visible to infrared range and hence may accelerate the discovery of novel photonic materials.
要制造具有非凡光学特性（例如大的完全光子带隙）的无序超均匀材料，需要有能力合成在纳米尺度下仍能有效保持超均匀性的大尺寸样品。受此挑战的推动，我们提出了一种可行的平衡制备方案，该方案使用限制在二维平面中的二元顺磁胶体颗粒。可调磁场诱导的强且长程的偶极相互作用不受屏蔽效应的影响，而屏蔽效应会削弱带电胶体系统中的长程静电相互作用。具体而言，我们通过数值计算找到了一系列最优尺寸比，使得两相系统有效地实现超均匀。我们表明，超均匀性是低等温压缩率的普遍结果，这使得我们的方案适用于处理具有其他长程相互作用、维度和/或多分散性的更一般系统。我们的方法为合成在可见光到红外范围内起作用的大型光子超均匀材料铺平了道路，因此可能会加速新型光子材料的发现。
