Related papers: Hydrodynamic Lubrication in Colloidal Gels
We use a combination of original light scattering techniques and particles with unique optical properties to investigate the behavior of suspensions of attractive colloids under gravitational stress, following over time the concentration…
To gain insight into the kinetics of colloidal gel evolution at low particle volume fractions $\phi$, we utilize differential dynamic microscopy to investigate particle aggregation, geometric percolation, and the subsequent transition to…
We study experimentally and theoretically the sedimentation of gels made of strongly aggregated colloidal particles, focussing on the long time behavior, when mechanical equilibrium is asymptotically reached. The asymptotic gel height is…
Within the mode-coupling theory for ideal glass-transitions, the mean-squared displacement and the correlation function for density fluctuations are evaluated for a colloidal liquid of particles interacting with a square-well potential for…
Contact between fluctuating, fluid-lubricated soft surfaces is prevalent in engineering and biological systems, a process starting with adhesive contact, which can give rise to complex coarsening dynamics. One representation of such a…
We report a computer simulation study of a model gel-former obtained by modifying the three-body interactions of the Stillinger-Weber potential for silicon. This modification reduces the average coordination number and consequently shifts…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
Colloids that attractively bond to only a few neighbors (e.g., patchy particles) can form equilibrium gels with distinctive dynamic properties that are stable in time. Here, we use a coarse-grained model to explore the dynamics of linked…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
We study the melting behavior of charged colloidal crystals, using a simulation technique that combines a continuous mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann description for the microscopic electrolyte ions with a Brownian-dynamics simulation for the…
The effects of particle roughness and short-ranged non-central forces on colloidal gels are studied using computer simulations in which particles experience a sinusoidal variation in energy as they rotate. The number of minima $n$ and…
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…
The gelation kinetics of silica nanoparticles is a central process in physical chemistry, yet it is not fully understood. Gelation times are measured to increase by over 4 orders of magnitude, simply changing the monovalent salt species…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
Liquid mixtures composed of colloidal particles and much smaller non-adsorbing linear homopolymers can undergo a gelation transition due to polymer-mediated depletion forces. We now show that the addition of linear polymers to suspensions…
We investigate the slow dynamics in gelling systems by means of MonteCarlo simulations on the cubic lattice of a minimal statistical mechanics model. By opportunely varying some model parameter we are able to describe a crossover from the…
During drying of colloidal suspensions, colloidal particles can form concentrated particle layers beneath the receding free surface. The drying rate can gradually decrease with the growth of the particle layers. We construct a model to…
We report computer simulation results on the cluster formation of dipolar colloidal particles driven by a rotating external field in a quasi-two-dimensional setup. We focus on the interplay between permanent dipolar and hydrodynamic…
The flow-driven transport of interacting micron-sized particles occurs in many soft matter systems spanning from the translocation of proteins to moving emulsions in microfluidic devices. Here we combine experiments and theory to…
Repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially…