Related papers: Externally driven local colloidal ordering induced…
Usually, we expect large particles to sediment faster than small of the same material. Contrary to this intuition, we report a dynamical competition between sedimentation and phase ordering which leads to smaller particles settling faster…
We investigate transitions between topologically ordered phases in two spatial dimensions induced by the condensation of a bosonic quasiparticle. To this end, we formulate an extension of the theory of symmetry breaking phase transitions…
Thermophoresis is a transport phenomenon induced by a temperature gradient. Very small objects dispersed in a fluid medium and in a temperature gradient present a non homogeneous steady density. Analysing this phenomenon within the…
We show that doping of hole charge carriers leads to formation of electric dipolar clusters in cuprates. They are created by many-body interactions between the dopant ion outside and holes inside the CuO planes. Because of the two-fold…
A fluid in a pore can form diverse heterogeneous structures. We combine a capillary description with the cubic-plus-association equation of state to study the thermodynamic stability of droplets, bubbles and films of water at 358 K in a…
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…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
Colloidal particles self assemble into a wide range of structures under external AC electric fields due to induced dipolar interactions [Yethiraj and Van Blaaderen Nature 421 513 (2003)]. As a result of these dipolar interactions, at low…
Gels in soft-matter systems are an important nonergodic state of matter. We study a colloid-polymer mixture which is quenched by increasing the polymer concentration, from a fluid to a gel. Using confocal microscopy, we study both the…
While classical theory of phase transitions deals with systems where shape variation is energetically neutral, the account of rigidity can lead to the emergence of new thermodynamic features. One of them is a special type of critical points…
Electrolytic diffusiophoresis refers to directional migration of colloids due to interfacial forces that develop in response to local electrolytic concentration ($c$) gradients. This physicochemical transport provides an efficient…
We present a complete reciprocal description of particle motion inside multi-component fluids that extends the conventional Onsager formulation of non-equilibrium transport to systems where the thermodynamic forces are non-uniform on the…
When a fluid with a bulk liquid-vapor critical point is placed inside a static external field with spatial periodic oscillations in one direction, the bulk critical point splits into two new critical points and a triple point. This…
Phase transitions inside the pores of an aerogel are investigated by modelizing the aerogel structure by diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation on a cubic lattice in a finite box and considering $q$-states Potts variables on the…
Aggregation processes in systems of planar macromolecules and colloids drive a broad range of phenomena in natural systems and soft materials. Depending on chemical architecture, intermolecular interactions in these systems may favor…
Depletion interactions arise from entropic forces, and their ability to induce aggregation and even ordering of colloidal particles through self-assembly is well established, especially for spherical colloids. We vary the size and…
Drying suspensions often leave behind complex patterns of particulates, as might be seen in the coffee stains on a table. Here we consider the dynamics of periodic band or uniform solid film formation on a vertical plate suspended partially…
Mixed-order phase transitions display a discontinuity in the order parameter like first-order transitions yet feature critical behavior like second-order transitions. Such transitions have been predicted for a broad range of equilibrium and…
We present the first ab initio molecular dynamics study of collisions between metal-oxide clusters and surfaces. The resulting trajectories reveal that the internal degrees of freedom of the cluster play a defining role in collision…
The assembly of colloidal particles at liquid/liquid or air/liquid interfaces is a versatile procedure to create microstructured monolayers and study their behavior under compression. When combined with soft and deformable particles such as…