Related papers: Optical trapping of colloids at a liquid-liquid in…
This mini-review discusses the recent contribution of theoretical and computational physics as well as experimental efforts to the understanding of the behavior of colloidal particles in confined geometries and at liquid crystalline…
We report experiments that show rapid crystallization of colloids tethered to an oil-water interface in response to laser illumination. This light-induced transition is due to a combination of long-ranged thermophoretic pumping and local…
We demonstrate optical trapping and manipulation of defects and transparent microspheres in nematic liquid crystals (LCs). The three-dimensional director fields and positions of the particles are visualized using the Fluorescence Confocal…
Optical tweezers, the three-dimensional confinement of a nanoparticle by a strongly focused beam of light, have been widely employed in investigating biomaterial nanomechanics, nanoscopic fluid properties, and ultrasensitive detections in…
We report a study of reversible adsorption of DNA-coated colloids on complementary functionalized oil droplets. We show that it is possible to control the surface coverage of oil droplets by colloidal particles, by exploiting the fact that…
We study the assembly of colloids in a two phase water-water system that provides an environment that can sustain bacteria, providing a new structure with rich potential to confine and structure living colloids. The water-water system,…
We use confocal microscopy to study an equilibrated crystal-liquid interface in a colloidal suspension. Capillary waves roughen the surface, but locally the intrinsic interface is sharply defined. We use local measurements of the structure…
The self-assembly of DNA-coated colloids into highly-ordered structures offers great promise for advanced optical materials. However, control of disorder, defects, melting, and crystal growth is hindered by the lack of a microscopic…
Capillary forces guide the motion of biomolecular condensates, water-borne insects, and breakfast cereal. These surface-mediated interactions can be harnessed to build units into materials with exotic properties deriving from mesoscale…
Optical trapping has proven to be a valuable experimental technique for precisely controlling small dielectric objects. However, due to their very nature, conventional optical traps are diffraction limited and require high intensities to…
The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and…
Colloidal particles trapped at an interface between two fluids can form a wide range of different structures. Replacing one of the fluid with a liquid crystal increases the complexity of interactions and results in a greater range of…
When captured by a flat nematic-isotropic interface, colloidal particles can be dragged by it. As a result spatially periodic structures may appear, with the period depending on a particle mass, size, and interface…
Colloidal particles or nanoparticles, with equal affinity for two fluids, are known to adsorb irreversibly to the fluid-fluid interface. We present large-scale computer simulations of the demixing of a binary solvent containing such…
We study the wetting of a thin elastic filament floating on a fluid surface by a droplet of another, immiscible fluid. This quasi-2D experimental system is the lower-dimensional counterpart of the wetting and wrapping of a droplet by an…
Here we derive and experimentally test a free energy functional that captures the adhesion of DNA-coated emulsion droplets. Generalizing previous approaches, the theory combines important energetic and entropic effects of microscopic DNA…
Collective off resonant scattering of coherent light by a cold gas induces long-range interactions via interference of light scattered by different particles. In a 1D configuration these interactions grow particularly strong for particles…
Non-invasive optical manipulation of particles has emerged as a powerful and versatile tool for biological study and nanotechnology. In particular, trapping and rotation of cells, cell nuclei and sub-micron particles enables unique…
We present experiments which show that the partial wetting of droplets capped by taut elastic films is highly tunable. Adjusting the tension allows the contact angle and droplet morphology to be controlled. By exploiting these elastic…
A new experimental technique for creating and imaging collisions of micron-sized droplets settling under gravity is presented. A pair of glycerol droplets is suspended in air by means of two optical traps. The droplet relative velocities…