Geometrical frustration in colloidal ``antiferromanget''

We report experiments about a self-organized colloidal system that exhibits geometrical frustration similar to that of antiferromagnetic Ising spins on a triangular lattice. Novel thermally sensitive microgel NIPA (N-isopropyl acrylamide) spheres are close packed between two parallel flat walls with a vertical separation of about 1.5-particle diameters. The particles form an approximate in-plane triangular lattice. Neighboring particles tend to push each other toward opposite walls leading to out-of-plane local up and down buckling. We tune the strength of such effective antiferromagnetic interactions by varying temperature-tunable diameter of spheres. ``Spin'' flipping was directly visualized with video microscopy. We investigated the static structures, the dynamics of particles with different degrees of frustration and the degenerated ground state. This experiment is the first dynamic measurement in a geometrical frustrated system at single-particle resolution.