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Understanding how colloidal suspensions behave in confined environments has a striking relevance in practical applications. Despite the fact that the behaviour of colloids in the bulk is key to identify the main elements affecting their…
We present a new instability driven by a combination of coagulation and radial drift of dust particles. We refer to this instability as ``coagulation instability" and regard it as a promising mechanism to concentrate dust particles and…
We present a confocal-microscopy study of demixing and remixing in binary liquids containing colloidal particles. First, particle-stabilized emulsions have been fabricated by nucleation and growth of droplets upon cooling from the…
We study the phase behavior of bowl-shaped particles using computer simulations. These particles were found experimentally to form a meta-stable worm-like fluid phase in which the bowl-shaped particles have a strong tendency to stack on top…
We study confined colloidal suspensions as a model system which approximates the behavior of confined small molecule glass-formers. Dense colloidal suspensions become glassier when confined between parallel glass plates. We use confocal…
We study the metastable behaviour of a stochastic system of particles with hard-core interactions in a high-density regime. Particles sit on the vertices of a bipartite graph. New particles appear subject to a neighbourhood exclusion…
Can a gas behave like a crystal? Supersolidity is an intriguing and challenging state of matter which combines key features of superfluids and crystals. Predicted a long time ago, its experimental realization has been recently achieved in…
Particles confined in droplets are called compound particles. They are encountered in various biological and soft matter systems. Hydrodynamics can play a decisive role in determining the configuration and stability of these multiphase…
Two-dimensional (2D) crystals made of active particles were shown recently to be able to experience extremely large spontaneous deformations without melting. The root of this phenomenon was argued to lie in the time-persistence of the…
We consider the dynamics of a periodic chain of N coupled overdamped particles under the influence of noise, in the limit of large N. Each particle is subjected to a bistable local potential, to a linear coupling with its nearest…
We investigate the role of thermal instability, arising from radiative cooling of an optically thin, dusty plasma, by linear stability analysis. The corresponding isobaric stability condition for condensation mode is found to be modified…
Dense suspensions of particles are relevant to many applications and are a key platform for developing a fundamental physics of out-of-equilibrium systems. They present challenging flow properties, apparently turning from liquid to solid…
Computer simulations of bi-continuous two-phase fluids with intersparsed dumbbells show that, unlike rigid colloids, soft dumbbells do not lead to arrested coarsening. However, they significantly alter the curvature dynamics of the…
We develop a thermodynamic description of particles held at a fixed surface potential. This system is of particular interest in view of the continuing controversy over the possibility of a fluid-fluid phase separation in aqueous colloidal…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
The identification of cells and particles based on their transport properties in microfluidic devices is crucial for numerous applications in biology and medicine. Neutrally buoyant particles transported in microfluidic channels, migrate…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
We demonstrate that emulsion droplets stabilized by interfacial particles become unstable beyond a size threshold set by gravity. This holds not only for colloids but supra-colloidal glass beads, using which we directly observe the ejection…
We investigate theoretically the bifurcation scenario for colloidal suspensions subject to a vertical temperature gradient taking into account the effect of sedimentation. In contrast to molecular binary mixtures, here the thermal…
When liquids are cooled sufficiently rapidly below their melting temperature, they may bypass crystalization and, instead, enter a long-lived metastable supercooled state that has long been the focus of intense research. Although they…