Related papers: Critical Casimir effect for colloids close to chem…
We consider an ensemble of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a near-critical solvent such as a binary liquid mixture close to its critical demixing point. The emerging long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter of…
Colloids immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces (CCFs) because they confine its concentration fluctuations and influence the latter via effective surface fields. To date, CCFs have only been…
We study the behavior of fluids, confined by geometrically structured substrates, upon approaching a critical point at T = Tc in their bulk phase diagram. As generic substrate structures periodic arrays of wedges and ridges are considered.…
The critical Casimir effect provides a thermodynamic analogue of the well-known quantum mechanical Casimir effect. It acts between two surfaces immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture, and results from the confinement of concentration…
The Casimir effect in quantum electrodynamics (QED) is perhaps the best-known example of fluctuation-induced long-ranged force acting on objects (conducting plates) immersed in a fluctuating medium (quantum electromagnetic field in vacuum).…
Based on renormalization group concepts and explicit mean field calculations we study the universal contribution to the effective force and torque acting on an ellipsoidal colloidal particle which is dissolved in a critical fluid and is…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal confined by two parallel planar interfaces, one being laterally homogeneous and the other provided by a substrate endowed with a periodic chemical stripe pattern. Based on continuum theory we analyze the…
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phase behavior of a binary mixture of colloids with opposite adsorption preferences in a critical solvent. As a result of the attractive and repulsive critical Casimir forces, the…
Critical Casimir forces can play an important role for applications in nano-science and nanotechnology, owing to their piconewton strength, nanometric action range, fine tunability as a function of temperature, and exquisite dependence on…
If colloidal solute particles are suspended in a solvent close to its critical point, they act as cavities in a fluctuating medium and thereby restrict and modify the fluctuation spectrum in a way which depends on their relative…
Within mean-field theory we determine the universal scaling function for the effective force acting on a single colloid located near the interface between two coexisting liquid phases of a binary liquid mixture close to its critical…
Using quasi-exact numerical density-matrix renormalization-group techniques we calculate the critical Casimir force for a two-dimensional (2D) Ising strip with equal strong surface fields, along the thermodynamic paths corresponding to the…
The spatial suppression of order parameter fluctuations in a critical media produces Critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces. This scenario is realized in a critical binary mixture near the demixing transition point that…
We review recent advances in the theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies of critical Casimir forces in soft matter, with particular emphasis on their relevance for the structures of colloidal suspensions and on their dynamics.…
We present a numerical study of the effective potential $V_\mathrm{eff}$ between two hard-sphere colloids dispersed in a solvent of interacting particles, for several values of temperature and solvent density, approaching the solvent…
We experimentally demonstrate that critical Casimir forces in colloidal systems can be continuously tuned by the choice of boundary conditions. The interaction potential of a colloidal particle in a mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine has…
By using the critical Casimir force, we study the attractive strength dependent aggregation of colloids with and without gravity by means of Near Field scattering. Significant differences were seen between microgravity and ground…
We study the behavior of the critical Casimir force and its interplay with the van der Waals force acting between two parallel slabs separated at a distance $L$ from each other confining a non-polar simple fluid or a binary liquid mixture.…
We report a numerical investigation of two colloids immersed in a critical solvent, with the aim of quantifying the effective colloid-colloid interaction potential. By turning on an attraction between the colloid and the solvent particles…
Critical Casimir forces emerge between objects, such as colloidal particles, whenever their surfaces spatially confine the fluctuations of the order parameter of a critical liquid used as a solvent. These forces act at short but…