Related papers: A microscopic model for colloidal gels with direct…
We study colloidal particle dynamics of a model glass system using confocal and fluorescence microscopy as the sample evolves from a hard-sphere glass to a liquid with attractive interparticle interactions. The transition from hard-sphere…
In a dense colloidal suspension at a volume fraction slightly lower than that of its glass transition, we follow the trajectories of an assembly of tracers over a large time window. We define a local activity, which quantifies the local…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…
Glasses and gels are the two dynamically arrested, disordered states of matter. Despite their importance, their similarities and differences remain elusive, especially at high density. We identify dynamical and structural signatures which…
This article discusses recent attempts to provide a deeper understanding of the thermoreversible "gel" state of colloidal matter and to unravel the analogies between gels at the colloidal level and gels at the molecular level, commonly…
We use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of a simple glass-forming system to investigate how its liquid-gas phase separation kinetics depends on temperature. A shallow quench leads to a fully demixed liquid-gas system whereas a…
Colloidal gels are out-of-equilibrium structures, made up of a rarefied network of colloidal particles. Comparing experiments to numerical simulations, with hydrodynamic interactions switched off, we demonstrate the crucial role of the…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
We consider a microscopic model of a polymer blend that is prone to phase separation. Permanent crosslinks are introduced between randomly chosen pairs of monomers, drawn from the Deam-Edwards distribution. Thereby, not only density but…
We report a numerical study, covering a wide range of packing fraction $\phi$ and temperature $T$, for a system of particles interacting via a square well potential supplemented by an additional constraint on the maximum number $n_{\rm…
We use computer simulations to study the relaxation dynamics of a model for oil-in-water microemulsion droplets linked with telechelic polymers. This system exhibits both gel and glass phases and we show that the competition between these…
We study bidisperse colloidal suspensions confined within glass microcapillary tubes to model the glass transition in confined cylindrical geometries. We use high speed three-dimensional confocal microscopy to observe particle motions for a…
In supercooled liquids, dynamical facilitation refers to a phenomenon where microscopic motion begets further motion nearby, resulting in spatially heterogeneous dynamics. This is central to the glassy relaxation dynamics of such liquids,…
We study the dynamics of a glassy model with infinite range interactions externally driven by an oscillatory force. We find a well-defined transition in the (Temperature-Amplitude-Frequency) phase diagram between (i) a `glassy' state…
Colloid-polymer mixtures can undergo spinodal decomposition into colloid-rich and colloid-poor regions. Gelation results when interconnected colloid-rich regions solidify. We show that this occurs when these regions undergo a glass…
A scenario for systems with slow dynamics is characterised by stating that there are several temperatures coexisting in the sample, with a single temperature shared by all observables at each (widely separate) time-scale. In preparation for…
The nonlinear rheological properties of dense suspensions are discussed within simplified models, suggested by a recent first principles approach to the model of Brownian particles in a constant-velocity-gradient solvent flow. Shear…
The structural arrest of a polymeric suspension might be driven by an increase of the cross--linker concentration, that drives the gel transition, as well as by an increase of the polymer density, that induces a glass transition. These…
A simple model to investigate the long time dynamics of glass-formers is presented and applied to study a Lennard-Jones system in supercooled and glassy phases. According to our model, the point representing the system in the…
We used x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy to study the dynamics in the lamellar phase of a platelet suspension as a function of the particle concentration. We measured the collective diffusion coefficient along the director of the…