Related papers: Highly nonlinear dynamics in a slowly sedimenting …
Colloidal gel networks are disordered elastic solids that can form even in extremely dilute particle suspensions. With interaction strengths comparable to the thermal energy, their stress-bearing network can locally restructure via breaking…
We present a mesoscopic hydrodynamic description of the dynamics of colloidal suspensions. We consider the system as a gas of Brownian particles suspended in a Newtonian heat bath subjected to stationary non-equilibrium conditions imposed…
We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…
Concentrated particulate suspensions, commonplace in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries, display intriguing rheology. In particular, the dramatic increase in viscosity with strain rate (shear thickening and jamming) which is…
We use a custom shear cell coupled to an optical microscope to investigate at the particle level the yielding transition in concentrated emulsions subjected to an oscillatory shear deformation. By performing experiments lasting thousands of…
We present a novel dynamic light scattering setup to probe, with time and space resolution, the microscopic dynamics of soft matter systems confined within millimeter-sized spherical drops. By using an ad-hoc optical layout, we tackle the…
We demonstrate that an extended picture of kinetic constraints in glass-forming liquids is sufficient to explain dynamic anomalies observed in dense suspensions of strongly attracting colloidal particles. We augment a simple model of…
In the field of freezing colloidal suspensions, it is important to understand the particle-scale behavior of particle packing. Here, we reveal the dynamics of particle packing by identifying the behavior of each single particle in situ. The…
Results of the idealized mode-coupling theory for the structural relaxation in suspensions of hard-sphere colloidal particles are presented and discussed with regard to recent light scattering experiments. The structural relaxation becomes…
Charged colloidal dispersions make up the basis of a broad range of industrial and commercial products, from paints to coatings and additives in cosmetics. During drying, an initially liquid dispersion of such particles is slowly…
We study numerically and analytically the dynamics of a sedimenting suspension of active, reproducing particles, such as growing bacteria in a gravitational field. In steady state we find a non-equilibrium phase transition between a…
We study the rolling and sliding motion of droplets on a corrugated substrate by Molecular Dynamics simulations. Droplets are driven by an external body force (gravity) and we investigate the velocity profile and dissipation mechanisms in…
A Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability of a dense colloidal layer under gravity in a capillary of microfluidic dimensions is considered. We access all relevant lengthscales with particle-level microscopy and computer simulations which…
While it is widely acknowledged that system-spanning particulate structures contribute to the observed yield stress and shear-thinning in attractive colloidal gels, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying microscopic mechanisms…
We show that mixing a colloidal gel with larger, non-Brownian grains generates novel flow-switched bistability. Using a combination of confocal microscopy and rheology, we find that prolonged moderate shear results in liquefaction 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…
Bulk rheological properties of viscoelastic fluids have been extensively studied in macroscopic shearing geometries. However, little is known when an active microscopic probe is used to locally perturb them far from the linear-response…
In simulations and experiments, we study the drying of films containing mixtures of large and small colloidal particles in water. During drying, the mixture stratifies into a layer of the larger particles at the bottom with a layer of the…
In the vicinity of their glass transition, dense colloidal suspensions acquire elastic properties over experimental timescales. We investigate the possibility of a visco-elastic flow instability in curved geometry for such materials. To…
Active colloids constitute a novel class of materials composed of colloidal-scale particles locally converting chemical energy into motility, mimicking micro-organisms. Evolving far from equilibrium, these systems display structural…