Related papers: Solid Capillarity: When and How does Surface Tensi…
We present an extensive but concise review of our present understanding, largely based on theory and simulation work from our group, on the equilibrium behavior of solid surfaces and nanosystems close to the bulk melting point. In the first…
Soft porous materials, such as biological tissues and soils, are exposed to periodic deformations in a variety of natural and industrial contexts. The detailed flow and mechanics of these deformations have not yet been systematically…
Drying complex fluids is a common phenomenon where a liquid phase transforms into a dense or porous solid. This transformation involves several physical processes, such as the diffusion of liquid molecules into the surrounding atmosphere…
A particle placed in soft matter distorts its host and creates an energy landscape. This can occur, for example, for particles in liquid crystals, for particles on lipid bilayers or for particles trapped at fluid interfaces. Such energies…
The lubricated motion of an object near a deformable boundary presents striking subtleties arising from the coupling between the elasticity of the boundary and lubricated flow, including but not limited to the emergence of a lift force…
We address the folding induced by differential growth in soft layered solids via an elementary model that consists of a soft growing neo-Hookean elastic layer adhered to a deep elastic substrate. As the layer/substrate modulus ratio is…
Liquid adsorption in nanoporous materials induces their deformation due to strong capillary forces. The linear relationship between the liquid pressure and the solid strain (pore-load modulus) provides an experimental technique to determine…
Many soft jammed materials, such as pastes, gels, concentrated emulsions, and suspensions, possess a threshold stress, known as yield stress, that must be exceeded to cause permanent deformation or flow. In rheology, the term plastic flow…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
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…
Soft interfaces can mediate interactions between particles bound to them. The force transmitted through the surface geometry on a particle may be expressed as a closed line integral of the surface stress tensor around that particle. This…
A huge number of technological and biological systems involves the lubricated contact between rough surfaces of soft solids in relative accelerated motion. Examples include dynamical rubber seals and the human joints. In this study we…
When a block made of an elastomer is subjected to large shear, its surface remains flat. When a block of biological soft tissue is subjected to large shear, it is likely that its surface in the plane of shear will buckle (apparition of…
When a solid plate is withdrawn from a partially wetting liquid, a liquid layer dewets the moving substrate. High-speed imaging reveals alternating thin and thick regions in the entrained layer in the transverse direction at steady state.…
The surface tension of partially wetting droplets deforms soft substrates. These deformations are usually localized to a narrow region near the contact line, forming a so-called `elastocapillary ridge.' When a droplet slides along a…
Spatial confinement in nanoporous media affects the structure, thermodynamics and mobility of molecular soft matter often markedly. This article reviews thermodynamic equilibrium phenomena, such as physisorption, capillary condensation,…
The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…
We explore the influence of particle softness and internal structure on both the bulk and interfacial rheological properties of colloidal suspensions. We probe bulk stresses by conventional rheology, by measuring the flow curves, shear…
The stability of thin liquid coatings is of fundamental interest in every- day life. Homogeneous and non-volatile liquid coatings may dewet either by heterogeneous nucleation, thermal nucleation, or spinodal dewetting. Wetting and dewetting…
When subjected to large amplitude oscillatory shear stress, aqueous Laponite suspensions show an abrupt solidification transition after a long delay time tc. We measure the dependence of tc on stress amplitude, frequency, and on the…