Related papers: Particle selection through topographic surface pat…
We explore the conditions under which colloids can be stabilized by the addition of smaller particles. The largest repulsive barriers between colloids occur when the added particles repel each other with soft interactions, leading to an…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
Colloidal particles are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with enhanced physical properties. The state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing these particles provide control over shape, size, and directionality of the…
We study the elasto-plastic behavior of dense attractive emulsions under mechanical perturbation. The attraction is introduced through non-specific depletion interactions between the droplets and is controlled by changing the concentration…
Combining topology and plasmonics paradigms in nanocolloidal systems may enable new means of pre-engineering desired composite material properties. Here we design and realize orientationally ordered assemblies of noble metal nanoparticles…
A colloidal particle driven by externally actuated rotation can self-propel parallel to a rigid boundary by exploiting the hydrodynamic coupling that surfaces induce between translation and rotation. As such a roller moves along the…
We revisit the role of attractions in liquids and apply these concepts to colloidal suspensions. Two means are used to investigate the structure; the pair correlation function and a recently developed topological method. The latter…
We examine the behavior of spherical silica particles trapped at an air-nematic liquid crystal interface. When a strong normal anchoring is imposed, the beads spontaneously form various structures depending on their area density and the…
A trapping mechanism for propelled colloidal particles based on an inhomogeneous drive is presented and studied by means of computer simulations. In experiments this method can be realized using photophoretic Janus particles driven by a…
Crystallization through vapor deposition is ubiquitous, and is inevitably influenced by impurities, which often impact the local structure. Interestingly, the effect of immobilizing some of the depositing particles themselves, which would…
Shape transformations of hairy nanoparticles under confinement are studied using molecular dynamic simulations. We discuss the behavior of these particles in slits with inert or attractive walls. We assume that only chain-wall interactions…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
Charged colloidal particles trapped at an air--water interface are well known to form an ordered crystal, stabilized by a long ranged repulsion, the details of this repulsion remain something of a mystery, but all experiments performed to…
We investigate the evolution of a system of colloidal particles, trapped at a fluid interface and interacting via capillary attraction, as function of the range of the capillary interaction and temperature. We address the collapse of an…
We employ a novel Monte Carlo simulation scheme to elucidate the stabilization of neutral colloidal microspheres by means of highly-charged nanoparticles [V. Tohver et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98, 8950 (2001)]. In accordance with…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
The ability to manipulate polar entities with multiple external fields opens exciting possibilities for emerging functionalities and novel applications in spin systems, photonics, metamaterials, and soft matter. Liquid crystals (LCs),…
We study gelation in suspensions of model colloidal particles with short-ranged attractive and long-ranged repulsive interactions by means of three-dimensional fluorescence confocal microscopy. At low packing fractions, particles form…
We investigate bridging and aggregation of two colloidal particles in a near-critical binary mixture when the fluid far from the particles is outside the coexistence (CX) curve and is rich in the component disfavored by the colloid…
The effect of curvature and how it induces and enhances the transport of colloidal particles driven through narrow channels represent an unexplored research avenue. Here we combine experiments and simulations to investigate the dynamics of…