Large effect of polydispersity on defect concentrations in colloidal crystals

We compute the equilibrium concentration of stacking faults and point defects in polydisperse hard-sphere crystals. We find that, while the concentration of stacking faults remains similar to that of monodisperse hard-sphere crystals, the concentration of vacancies decreases by about a factor of 2. Most strikingly, the concentration of interstitials in the maximally polydisperse crystal may be some six orders of magnitude larger than in a monodisperse crystal. We show that this dramatic increase in interstitial concentration is due to the increased probability of finding small particles and that the small-particle tail of the particle size distribution is crucial for the interstitial concentration in a colloidal crystal. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.