Strongly interacting binary mixtures of superparamagnetic colloidal particlesconfined to a two-dimensional water-air interface are examined by theory,computer simulation and experiment. The mixture exhibits a partial clusteringin equilibrium: in the voids of the matrix of unclustered big particles, thesmall particles form subclusters with a sponge-like topology which isaccompanied by a characteristic small-wave vector peak in the small-smallstructure factor. This partial clustering is a general phenomenon occurring forstrongly coupled negatively non-additive mixtures.
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