Related papers: Hydrogel menisci: Shape, interaction, and instabil…
From pasta to biological tissues to contact lenses, gel and gel-like materials inherently soften as they swell with water. In dry, low-relative-humidity environments, these materials stiffen as they de-swell with water. Here, we use…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Particle surface chemistry and internal softness are two fundamental parameters in governing the mechanical properties of dense colloidal suspensions, dictating structure and flow, therefore of interest from materials fabrication to…
A key question in the interaction of droplets with lubricated and liquid-infused surfaces is what determines the apparent contact angle of droplets. Previous work has determined this using measured values of the geometry of the `skirt' --…
The ability of soft matter such as drops and bubbles to change shape dynamically during interaction can give rise to counter-intuitive behaviour that may be expected of rigid materials. Here we show that dimple formation on approach and the…
We report on the formation of surface instabilities in a layer of thermoreversible ferrogel when exposed to a vertical magnetic field. Both static and time dependent magnetic fields are employed. Under variations of temperature, the…
Ferrogels, i.e., hydrogels loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, have the ability to deform in external magnetic fields. The precise shape of deformation and the alignment of the gel in the field, however, depend on the interplay of several…
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…
Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelastcity of…
Soft colloids are increasingly used as model systems to address fundamental issues such as crystallisation and the glass and jamming transitions. Among the available classes of soft colloids, microgels are emerging as the gold standard.…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles constituted by cross-linked polymer networks with a high potential for applications. In particular, after adsorption at a fluid interface, interfacial tension provides two-dimensional (2D) confinement…
Objects that float at the interface between a liquid and a gas interact because of interfacial deformation and the effect of gravity. We highlight the crucial role of buoyancy in this interaction, which, for small particles, prevails over…
Soft pair potentials predict a reentrant liquid phase for high concentrations, a behavior not observed experimentally. Here, very soft microgels confined at an oil-water interface are used as a model system of particles interacting via a…
Droplet impacts are fundamental to fluid-structure interactions, shaping processes from erosion to bioprinting. While previous scaling laws have provided insights into droplet dynamics, force scaling laws remain insufficiently understood,…
Particles at liquid interfaces have the tendency to cluster due to capillary forces competing with gravitational buoyancy (i.e., normal to the distorted free surface). This is known as the Cheerios effect. Here we experimentally and…
The reconfiguration of soft, deformable particles upon adsorption at the interface between two fluids underpins many aspects of their dynamics and interactions, ultimately controlling the macroscopic properties of particle monolayers of…
Buckling induced by viscous flow changes the shape of sheet-like nanomaterial particles suspended in liquids. This instability at the particle scale affects collective behavior of suspension flows and has many technological and biological…
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…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…