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The physical gelation of colloids produces elastic structures that arecommonly used to stabilize complex fluids in multiple industries. However, theability to control the level of elastic modulus of these materials is limitedby the universality of the arrested spinodal decomposition mechanism thatgoverns their formation. We demonstrate that manipulating particle shape canyield very large shifts in gel elasticity relative to this universal behavior,and that these changes are generated by a set of independent mechanisms thatact multiplicatively. Modeling demonstrates that this efficient generation ofelasticity is the consequence of the combined effects of shape anisotropy onthe hierarchical fractal microstructure of the gel network, the anisotropy ofthe attractive interparticle pair potentials, and the volumetric compactness ofthe fractal cluster. The findings show how and why particle anisotropy can beexploited to generate elasticity at ultra-low colloidal volume fractions inthis important class of soft matter.

Shape anisotropy enhances the elasticity of colloidal gels through mechanisms that act multiplicatively