Computer simulation study of phase behavior and structural relaxation in a gel modeled by three body interactions

Abstract

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica a gel is a coherent mass consisting of a liquid in which particles too small to be seen in an ordinary optical microscope are either dispersed or arranged in a fine network throughout the mass. A gel may be notably elastic and jellylike (as gelatin or fruit jelly), or quite solid and rigid (as silica gel, a material that looks like coarse white sand and is used as a dehumidifier) [32]. One can follow from this general definition that gels are low density open network structures which can sustain a weak stress, and in this sense behave like a solid. Like glasses, these are disordered arrested systems which do not flow. A disordered material is characterized as a glass if its relaxation time is very large. In a loose sense, gels are low density glasses but in fact, they are different. Colloidal gels have dispersed particles in a solvent. Solvents are often liquids but sometime they could be air, e.g., silica gel.