Related papers: Drying of Soft Colloidal Films
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…
In simulations and experiments, we study the drying of films containing mixtures of large and small colloidal particles in water. During drying, the mixture stratifies into a layer of the larger particles at the bottom with a layer of the…
We have studied the breakup and subsequent fluid flow in very thin films of partially wetting liquid on solid substrates, using molecular dynamics simulations. The liquid is made of short chain molecules interacting with Lennard-Jones…
This fluid dynamics video demonstrates an experiment on superfast thinning of a freestanding thin aqueous film. The production of such films is of fundamental interest for interfacial sciences and the applications in nanoscience. The stable…
A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…
Silica aerogels are nanoporous materials with exceptional optical and physical properties, making them promising candidates to enhance solar cell efficiency as antireflective coatings. This study synthesized hydrophobic silica aerogel thin…
The drying of a colloidal dispersion can result in a gel phase defined as a porous matrix saturated in solvent. During the drying process, high mechanical stresses are generated. When these stresses exceed the strength of the material, they…
The adsorption of a collagen fragment on both a hydrophobic, hydrogen-terminated and a hydrophilic, natively oxidised Si surface is investigated using all-atom molecular dynamics. While favourable direct protein-surface interactions via…
Freestanding thin films, a class of low-dimensional materials capable of maintaining structural integrity without substrates, have emerged as a forefront research focus. Their unique advantages-circumventing substrate clamping, liberating…
In recent years, slippery surfaces have attracted significant interest due to their excellent liquid-repellent properties and their potential in diverse commercial applications. Such surfaces are prepared by coating functionalized solid…
Recent experiments have shown that various structures may be formed during the evaporative dewetting of thin films of colloidal suspensions. Nano-particle deposits of strongly branched `flower-like', labyrinthine and network structures are…
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…
The performance of solution-processed solar cells strongly depends on the geometrical structure and roughness of the photovoltaic layers formed during film drying. During the drying process, the interplay of crystallization and…
Shearing transitions of multi-layer molecularly thin-film lubrication systems in variations of the film-substrate coupling strength and the load are studied by using a multiscale method. Three kinds of the interlayer slips found in…
Soft materials, such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions, and biological systems, are typically multicomponent mixtures of macromolecules and simpler components (e.g., microions, monomers, solvent) that can assemble into complex…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
We study an elasticity model for compressed protein monolayers or particle rafts at a liquid interface. Based on the microscopic view of hard-core particles with soft shells, a bead-spring model is formulated and analyzed in terms of…
The effects of wet chemical processing conventionally employed in device fabrication standards are systematically studied on molybdenum oxide (MoOx) ultra-thin films. We have combined x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), angle resolved…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…