Impurity partitioning during colloidal crystallization.

We have found that an impurity partitioning takes place during growth of colloidal crystals, which was recognized by the fact that the impurity concentration in the solid (CS) was different from that in the initial solution (C0). The effective partition coefficient k(eff) (=CS/C0) was investigated for pure polystyrene and polystyrene dyed with fluorescent particles by changing the ratio of particle diameters d(imp)/d(cryst) and growth rate V. At each size ratio for the polystyrene impurity, k(eff) was less than unity and increased to unity with increasing V, whereas at a given growth rate, k(eff) increased to unity as d(imp)/d(cryst) approached unity.