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Interplay of anisotropy and interactions in charged colloidal disks
Charged plate-like colloidal suspensions such as gibbsite and some clays exhibit interesting and rich phase behavior including liquid-crystalline and arrested gel-like states. The anisotropic shape of such particles suggests that these materials could form liquid crystalline phases due to the competition between positional and orientational entropy. In some cases, however, isotropic-nematic transition is hindered by formation of a gel-like viscoelastic phase. The question that arises is how the electrostatic interactions influence the liquid crystal formation. Motivated by these experimental findings, we have investigated the structure and dynamics of charged disks by means of Monte-Carlo simulations. In this talk, I will clarify the the role of anisotropic nature of screened electrostatic interactions on the formation of liquid-crystalline phases and arrested states. Finally, I will compare the results of our simulations with experiments.