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We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
Chiral nematic or cholesteric liquid crystals (LCs) are mesophases with long-ranged orientational order featuring a quasi-layered periodicity imparted by a helical configuration but lacking positional order. Doping molecular cholesteric LCs…
Colloidal particles dispersed in a partially ordered medium, such as a liquid crystal (LC) phase, disturb its alignment and are subject to elastic forces. These forces are long-ranged, anisotropic and tunable through temperature or external…
We simulate a colloidal particle (radius R) in a cholesteric liquid crystal (pitch p) with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The local defect structure evolves from a dipolar pair of surface defects (boojums) at…
We measure hydrodynamic interactions between colloidal particles confined in a thin sheet of fluid. The reduced dimensionality, compared to a bulk fluid, increases dramatically the range of couplings. Using optical tweezers we force a two…
Hard sphere colloidal particles are a basic model system for general research into phase behavior, ordering and out-equilibrium glass transitions. Experimentally it has been shown that oscillatory shearing of a monodisperse hard sphere…
Particle tracking is a key to single-particle-level confocal microscopy observation of colloidal suspensions, emulsions, and granular matter. The conventional tracking method has not been able to provide accurate information on the size of…
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 study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
The ground state of colloidal magnetic particles in a modulated channel are investigated as function of the tilt angle of an applied magnetic field. The particles are confined by a parabolic potential in the transversal direction while in…
By means of classical density functional theory and its dynamical extension, we consider a colloidal fluid with spherically-symmetric competing interactions, which are well known to exhibit a rich bulk phase behavior. This includes complex…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
Building a general theoretical framework to describe the microscopic origin of macroscopic chirality in (colloidal) liquid crystals is a long-standing challenge. Here, we combine classical density functional theory with Monte Carlo…
A binary mixture of super-paramagnetic colloidal particles is confined between glass plates such that the large particles become fixed and provide a two-dimensional disordered matrix for the still mobile small particles, which form a fluid.…
We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…
We have studied spectral properties of a cholesteric liquid crystal with a combined defect consisting of a nanocomposite layer and a twist. The nanocomposite layer is made of metallic nanoballs dispersed in a transparent matrix and…
In this study, we investigated the self-ordering process in Langmuir films of polydisperse iron oxide nanoparticles on a water surface, employing in-situ X-ray scattering, surface pressure-area isotherm analysis, and Brewster angle…
We study a new type of 2D active material that exhibits macroscopic phases with two emergent broken symmetries: self-propelled achiral particles that form dense hexatic clusters, which spontaneously rotate. We experimentally realise active…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Strong particulate gels are widely believed to behave poroelastically in compression, e.g. in sedimentation, even though they consolidate irreversibly because of the stickiness of the particles. Particulate gels are usually adhesive as well…