Stiffness and Geometry Influences on the Shear Flow Behavior of Colloidal Rods

The flow of rodlike particle suspensions is of broad practical interest as they are highly susceptible to shear flow. Geometry and stiffness of rods, thereby, play a key role in the microscopic behavior which leads to the macroscopic rheological response. We present a combination of Rheology and Small Angle Neutron Scattering (Rheo-SANS) to resolve the orientational ordering of rodlike viruses under steady shear flow in the 2 relevant planes, the flow-gradient and the flow-vorticity plane. The full orientational order tensor can be resolved in this way, as has been shown earlier [Lang2016]. By bio-engineering viruses with different geometries and stiffnesses, we are able to study the influence of those parameters on the shear thinning behavior of dilute to semi-dilute rodlike colloidal suspensions without polydispersity issues.[Lang2016] C. Lang, J. Kohlbrecher, L. Porcar, M. P. Lettinga; Polymers 8 (2016); 29