Related papers: Critical Casimir forces and colloidal aggregation:…
Among the various kinds of effective forces in soft matter, the spatial range and the direction of the so-called critical Casimir force - which is generated by the enhanced thermal fluctuations close to a continuous phase transition - can…
If a fluctuating medium is confined, the ensuing perturbation of its fluctuation spectrum generates Casimir-like effective forces acting on its confining surfaces. Near a continuous phase transition of such a medium the corresponding order…
We investigate the behavior of colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine in the presence of a chemically patterned substrate. Close to the critical point of the mixture, the particles are subjected to…
Critical Casimir forces emerge among particles or surfaces immersed in a near-critical fluid, with the sign of the force determined by surface properties and with its strength tunable by minute temperature changes. Here, we show how such…
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…
Using the critical Casimir force, we study the attractive-strength dependence of diffusion-limited colloidal aggregation in microgravity. By means of near field scattering we measure both the static and dynamic structure factor of the…
We study systems in which both long-ranged van der Waals and critical Casimir interactions are present. We study the interplay between these forces, as well as the {\it total} force (TF) between a spherical colloid particle and a thick…
Within mean field theory, we investigate the bridging transition between a pair of parallel cylindrical colloids immersed in a binary liquid mixture as a solvent which is close to its critical consolute point $T_c$. We determine the…
Colloids immersed in a critical or near-critical binary liquid mixture and close to a chemically patterned substrate are subject to normal and lateral critical Casimir forces of dominating strength. For a single colloid we calculate these…
We study the normal and lateral effective critical Casimir forces acting on a spherical colloid immersed in a critical binary solvent and close to a chemically structured substrate with alternating adsorption preference. We calculate the…
Understanding the force between charged surfaces immersed in an electrolyte solution is a classic problem in soft matter and liquid-state theory. Recent experiments showed that the force decays exponentially but the characteristic decay…
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…
In our study we investigate the behaviour of the net force (NF) emerging between an ellipsoidal particle and a thick plate (slab), when the interaction takes place in a near critical fluid medium with account for the omnipresent van der…
We study the fluctuation-induced Casimir interactions in colloidal suspensions, especially between colloids immersed in a binary liquid close to its critical demixing point. To simulate these systems, we present a highly efficient cluster…
We argue that in a fluid, or magnet, confined by adsorbing walls which favour liquid, or (+) phase, the solvation (Casimir) force in the vicinity of the critical point is strongly influenced by capillary condensation which occurs below the…
Using field-theoretical methods and exploiting conformal invariance, we study Casimir forces at tricritical points exerted by long-range fluctuations of the order-parameter field. Special attention is paid to the situation where the…
We study the electrostatic Casimir effect and related phenomena in equilibrium statistical mechanics of classical (non-quantum) charged fluids. The prototype model consists of two identical dielectric slabs in empty space (the pure Casimir…
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…
Within mean-field theory we calculate universal scaling functions associated with critical Casimir forces for a system consisting of three parallel cylindrical colloids immersed in a near-critical binary liquid mixture. For several…
In a recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 156101 (2009)], we presented experiments on critical Casimir induced colloidal aggregation in a system with negligibly small van der Waals forces. We presented a simple model based on a competition…