Related papers: How to reduce the crack density in drying colloida…

Solvent evaporation in soft matter solutions (solutions of colloidal particles, polymers and their mixtures) is an important process in material making and in printing and coating industries. The solvent evaporation process determines the…

We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a…

When a drop containing colloidal particles evaporates on a surface, a circular stain made of these particles is often observed due to an internal flow toward the contact line. To hinder this effect, several approaches have been proposed…

Diverse processes -- e.g., environmental pollution, groundwater remediation, oil recovery, filtration, and drug delivery -- involve the transport of colloidal particles in porous media. Using confocal microscopy, we directly visualize this…

Repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially…

The drying of a drop containing particles often results in the accumulation of the particles at the contact line. In this work, we investigate the drying of an aqueous colloidal drop surrounded by a hydrogel that is also evaporating. We…

We present an experimental investigation of drying suspensions of both hard and soft nanolatex spheres. The crack formation is examined as a function of the proportion of hard and soft deformable particles, leading to tunable elastic…

Colloidal dispersions are prized as model systems to understand basic properties of materials, and are central to a wide range of industries from cosmetics to foods to agrichemicals. Among the key developments in using colloids to address…

Inspired by the observation that many naturally occurring adhesives arise as textured thin films, we consider the displacement controlled peeling of a flexible plate from an incision-patterned thin adhesive elastic layer. We find that crack…

Assembled monolayers of colloidal particles are crucial for various applications, including opto-electronics, surface engineering, as well as light harvesting, and catalysis. A common approach for self-assembly is the drying of a colloidal…

Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…

Colloidal gels have strong industrial relevance as they can behave liquid- and solid-like. The latter allows them to support the buoyant weight against gravity. However, the system is intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, which means that the…

The nonlinear rheological properties of dense suspensions are discussed within simplified models, suggested by a recent first principles approach to the model of Brownian particles in a constant-velocity-gradient solvent flow. Shear…

Historical monuments, outdoor stone sculptures and artworks made of porous materials are exposed to chemical and physical degradation over time. Presently, the most promising route for consolidation of weakened porous materials is the…

Colloidal gels are formed through the aggregation of attractive particles, whose size ranges from 10~nm to a few micrometers, suspended in a liquid. Such gels are ubiquitous in everyday life applications, from food products to paints or…

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…

In directionally-dried colloidal dispersions regular bands can appear behind the drying front, inclined at $\pm45^\circ$ to the drying line. Although these features have been noted to share visual similarities to shear bands in metal, no…

When a glassy polymer film is formed by evaporation, the region near the free surface is polymer rich and becomes glassy first, as noticed long ago by Scriven et al. We discuss the thickness of this "crust" and the time interval where it is…

I model the drying of a liquid film containing small and big colloid particles. Fortini et al. [A. Fortini et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 118301 (2016)] studied these films with both computer simulation and experiment. They found that at the…

Size polydispersity in colloidal particles can disrupt order in their self-assembly, ultimately leading to a complete suppression of crystallization. In contrast to various computational studies, few experimental studies systematically…