Related papers: Two-step aging dynamics in enzymatic milk gels
Attractive colloidal particles can form a disordered elastic solid or gel when quenched into a two-phase region, if the volume fraction is sufficiently large. When the interactions are comparable to thermal energies the stress-bearing…
Chocolate is known to undergo solid-liquid transition upon an increase in temperature as well as under application of deformation field. Upon sudden reduction in temperature from a molten state (or thermal rejuvenation), rheological…
Granular materials densify under repeated mechanical perturbations, a nonequilibrium dynamics that underlies many natural and industrial processes. Because granular relaxation is governed by frictional contacts and energy dissipation, this…
Hydrogels are soft materials engineered to suit a multitude of applications that exploit their tunable mechanochemical properties. Dynamic hydrogels employing noncovalent, physically crosslinked networks dominated by either enthalpic or…
We use X-Ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy to investigate the structural relaxation process in a metallic glass on the atomic length scale. We report evidence for a dynamical crossover between the supercooled liquid phase and the…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
Colloidal dispersions are prized as model systems to understand basic properties of materials, and are central to a wide range of industries from cosmetics to foods to agrichemicals. Among the key developments in using colloids to address…
Multicomponent gel systems have garnered much interest due to their compelling mechanical properties in the past decade. Yet, some mechanisms associated with multicomponent gels, such as sequential gelation, have been explored primarily in…
Sea ice is a key component of the Earth's climate system, making its aging process an essential focus of current research. The age of sea ice is closely linked to its thermal and mechanical properties, which govern its interactions with the…
Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…
We study colloidal particle dynamics of a model glass system using confocal and fluorescence microscopy as the sample evolves from a hard-sphere glass to a liquid with attractive interparticle interactions. The transition from hard-sphere…
Viscoelastic phase separation of colloidal suspensions can be interrupted to form gels either by glass transition or by crystallization. With a new confocal microscopy protocol, we follow the entire kinetics of phase separation, from…
We explore the glassy dynamics of soft colloids using microgels and charged particles interacting by steric and screened Coulomb interactions, respectively. In the supercooled regime, the structural relaxation time $\tau_\alpha$ of both…
Dilute Laponite suspensions in water at low salt concentration form repulsive colloidal glasses which display physical aging. This phenomenon is still not completely understood and in particular, little is known about the connection between…
The far-from-equilibrium dynamics of glassy systems share important phenomenological traits. A transition is generally observed from a time-homogeneous dynamical regime to an aging regime where physical changes occur intermittently and, on…
Colloidal gels consist of percolating networks of interconnected arms. Their mechanical properties depend on the individual arms, and on their collective behaviour. We use numerical simulations to pull on a single arm, built from a model…
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…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
We use time-resolved mechanical spectroscopy to offer a detailed picture of the gelation dynamics of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) suspensions following shear cessation in the presence of salt. CNCs are charged, rodlike colloids that…
Depending on the volume fraction and interparticle interactions, colloidal suspensions can form different phases, ranging from fluids, crystals, and glasses to gels. For soft microgels that are made from thermoresponsive polymers, the…