Self Assembly of Colloidal Particles at Small N

We confine the dilute colloidal suspension inside emulsion droplets and study the structures of the aggregated clusters at small particle number ($N\approx10$) in order to understand the governing rules of equilibrium self-assembly. The aggregation process is controlled by the short-range weak depletion attraction between particles, and the structural and dynamic properties of self-assembled colloidal clusters are monitored via optical microscopy. We compare the experimental results with the theory and simulations, which probe how the number of local minima increases with number of particles. Our system may be a good model system for understanding generic features of glass and gel transitions.