On the Role of Hydrodynamic Interactions in Colloidal Gelation

In this letter, we investigate several aspects related to the effect of hydrodynamic interactions on phase separation-induced gelation of colloidal particles. We explain physically the observation of hydrodynamic stabilization of cellular network structures in two dimensions. We demonstrate that hydrodynamic interactions have only a minor quantitative influence on the structure of transient gels in three dimensions. We discuss some experimental implications of our results.