Related papers: Colloidal aggregation in microgravity by critical …
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…
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…
In soft and condensed matter physics, effective interactions often emerge as a result of the spatial confinement of a fluctuating field. For instance, microscopic particles in a binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces…
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…
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 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…
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…
We study theoretically and experimentally the solvent-mediated critical Casimir force acting on colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine and close to substrates which are chemically patterned with…
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…
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…
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…
A recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 156101 (2009)] reports the experimental observation of aggregation of colloidal particles dispersed in a liquid mixture of heavy water and 3-methylpyridine. The experimental data are interpreted in…
Percolation and critical phenomena show common features such as scaling and universality. Colloidal particles, immersed in a solvent close to criticality, experience long-range effective forces, named critical Casimir forces. %These…
We report on the differences between colloidal systems left to evolve in the earth's gravitational field and the same systems for which a slow continuous rotation averaged out the effects of particle sedimentation on a distance scale small…
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 investigate the phase behaviour of mixtures of two populations of colloidal particles dispersed in a binary solvent system near its critical composition. The surfaces of particles are chemically modified to elicit a specific solvent…
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…
Recent experiments have measured the critical Casimir force acting on a colloid immersed in a binary liquid mixture near its continuous demixing phase transition and exposed to a chemically structured substrate. Motivated by these…
The possibility to modify the strength of the Casimir effect by tailoring the dielectric functions of the interacting surfaces is regarded as a unique opportunity in the development of Micro- and NanoElectroMechanical Systems. In air,…
I show that cooperative exclusion processes with selective kinetic constraints exhibit fluctuation-induced forces that can be attractive or repulsive, depending on the density of boundary reservoirs, when their density-dependent diffusion…