| Abstract
| - A polymer dispersion consisting of soft latex spheres with a diameter of 135 nm was used to produce a crystallinefilm with face-centered cubic (fcc) packing of the spheres. Different from conventional small-molecule and hard-sphere colloidal crystals, the crystalline latex film in the present case is soft (i.e., easily deformable). The structuralevolution of this soft colloidal latex film under stretching was investigated by in-situ synchrotron ultra-small-angleX-ray scattering. The film exhibits polycrystalline scattering behavior corresponding to fcc structure. Stretching resultsnot only in a large deformation of the crystallographic structure but also in considerable nonaffine deformation at highdraw ratios. The unexpected nonaffine deformation was attributed to slippage between rows of particles and crystallinegrain boundaries. The crystalline structure remains intact even at high deformation, suggesting that directional anisotropiccolloidal crystallites can be easily produced.
|
