Related papers: Dynamics of colloidal aggregation in microgravity …
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…
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…
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…
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…
Flow-induced aggregation of colloidal particles leads to aggregates with fairly high fractal dimension () which are directly responsible for the observed rheological properties of sheared dispersions. We address the problem of the decrease…
We numerically study a two-dimensional granular gas of rigid disks where an external driving force is applied to each particle in such a way that the system is driven into a steady state by balancing the energy input and the dissipation due…
The relationship between geometric and dynamic properties of fractal-like aggregates is studied in the continuum mass and momentum-transfer regimes. The synthetic aggregates were generated by a cluster-cluster aggregation algorithm. The…
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…
I present a three-dimensional Discrete Element Method study of self-gravitation and contact mechanics in cold granular assemblies. The model couples direct Newtonian attraction between every particle pair with a linear visco-elastic normal…
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…
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…
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…
Motivated by recent experiments with confined binary liquid mixtures near demixing, we study the universal critical properties of a system, which belongs to the Ising universality class, in the film geometry. We employ periodic boundary…
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…
We present a new Monte Carlo method to calculate Casimir forces acting on objects in a near-critical fluid, considering the two basic cases of a wall and a sphere embedded in a two-dimensional Ising medium. During the simulation, the…
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.…
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 study the distribution of swimming micro-organisms advected by a model turbulent flow and attracted towards a localised light source through phototaxis. It is shown that particles aggregate along a dynamical attractor with fractal…
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…