Related papers: Colloidal particles in liquid crystal films and at…
We use the Landau-de Gennes energy to describe a particle immersed into nematic liquid crystals with a constant applied magnetic field. We derive a limit energy in a regime where both line and point defects are present, showing…
A partially miscible binary liquid mixture, composed of A and B particles, is considered theoretically under conditions for which a stable A-rich liquid phase is in thermal equilibrium with the vapor phase. The B-rich liquid is metastable.…
We investigate the interaction energy between two colloidal particles on or immersed in nonadsorbing polymer brushes grafted onto the substrate as a function of the separation of the particles by use of self-consistent field theory…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
Colloidal droplets are used in a variety of practical applications. Some of these applications require particles of different sizes. These include medical diagnostic methods, the creation of photonic crystals, the formation of…
Within the framework of the mode coupling theory (MCT) of structural relaxation, mechanisms and properties of non-ergodicity transitions in rather dilute suspensions of colloidal particles characterized by strong short-ranged attractions…
The active motion of phoretic colloids leads them to accumulate at boundaries and interfaces. Such an excess accumulation, with respect to their passive counterparts, makes the dynamics of phoretic colloids particularly sensitive to the…
We study the effects of colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) in liquid crystal samples in the dilute limit, in a Landau--de Gennes theoretical framework. The effects of the suspended NPs are captured by a homogenized energy, as outlined…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
A particle placed in soft matter distorts its host and creates an energy landscape. This can occur, for example, for particles in liquid crystals, for particles on lipid bilayers or for particles trapped at fluid interfaces. Such energies…
The possibility to induce demixing in a colloidal mixture by adding small polymers, or other equivalent depletant agents, is theoretically investigated. By use of Mean Field Theory, suitably generalized to deal with short range effective…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
Recent progress in approaches to determine the elastic constants of solids starting from the microscopic particle interactions is reviewed. On the theoretical side, density functional theory approaches are discussed and compared to more…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
In a system of colloidal inclusions suspended in a thermalized bath of smaller particles, the bath engenders an attractive force between the inclusions, arising mainly from entropic origins, known as the depletion force. In the case of…
The efficiency of soft particles to stabilize emulsions is examined by measuring their desorption free energy, i.e., the mechanical work required to detach the particle from a fluid interface. Here, we consider rubber-like elastic as well…
Simple models based on isotropic interparticle attractions often fail to capture experimentally observed structures of colloidal gels formed through spinodal decomposition and subsequent arrest: the resulting gels are typically denser and…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
The dynamics of particles attached to an interface separating two immiscible fluids are encountered in a wide variety of applications. Here we present a combined asymptotic and numerical investigation of the fluid motion past spherical…
Ionic liquids are widely used as electrolytes in electrochemical devices. In this context, many experimental and theoretical approaches have been recently developed for characterizing their interface with electrodes. In this perspective…