Related papers: Aging of colloidal gels in microgravity
We conduct a molecular dynamics simulation of an inelastic gas system utilizing an event-driven algorithm combined with a thermostat mechanism. Initially, the kinetic energy of the system experiences a decay before settling into a…
Colloidal gels have unique mechanical and transport properties that stem from their bicontinous nature, in which a colloidal network is intertwined with a viscous solvent, and have found numerous applications in foods, cosmetics,…
Glasses and gels, widely encountered amorphous solids with diverse industrial and everyday applications, share intriguing similarities such as rigidity without crystalline order and dynamic slowing down during aging. However, the underlying…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
This study demonstrates that the free-surface flow dynamics of dense piles of contactless silica microparticles depend on the resting period prior to flow. Microfluidic rotating drum experiments reveal that longer resting times lead to…
The electrical resistance decay of a metallic granular packing has been measured as a function of time. This measurement gives information about the size of the conducting cluster formed by the well connected grains. Several regimes have…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
Thin films made of deformable micro- and nano-units, such as biological membranes, polymer interfaces, and particle-laden liquid surfaces, exhibit a complex behavior during drying, with consequences for various applications like wound…
Using molecular dynamics computer simulations we investigate the aging dynamics of a gel. We start from a fractal structure generated by the DLCA-DEF algorithm, onto which we then impose an interaction potential consisting of a short-range…
We use confocal microscopy to image colloidal gels formed from highly polydisperse particles. We suspend our polydisperse particles in a density matched solvent, and let the particles spontaneously aggregate through the van der Waals force.…
We study the dynamic behaviour of concentrated colloidal hard spheres using Time Resolved Correlation, a light scattering technique that can detect the slow evolution of the dynamics in out-of-equilibrium systems. Surprisingly, equilibrium…
Attractive colloids diffuse and aggregate to form gels, solid-like particle networks suspended in a fluid. Gravity is known to strongly impact the stability of gels once they are formed. However, its effect on the process of gel formation…
The phenomenon of aging in soft matter systems is an intriguing and interesting. In his study we investigate the microstructure and aging dynamics of fluorescent nanoclay gels formed from the mixture of small (~25) and large (~250) aspect…
Microgravity experiments on board the International Space Station, combined with particle-resolved direct numerical simulations, were conducted to investigate the long-term flocculation behavior of clay suspensions in saline water in the…
We study gelation in suspensions of model colloidal particles with short-ranged attractive and long-ranged repulsive interactions by means of three-dimensional fluorescence confocal microscopy. At low packing fractions, particles form…
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…
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…
Soft colloids are increasingly used as model systems to address fundamental issues such as crystallisation and the glass and jamming transitions. Among the available classes of soft colloids, microgels are emerging as the gold standard.…
We compare the slow dynamics of irreversible gels, colloidal gels, glasses and spin glasses by analyzing the behavior of the so called non-linear dynamical susceptibility, a quantity usually introduced to quantitatively characterize the…
Strong particulate gels are widely believed to behave poroelastically in compression, e.g. in sedimentation, even though they consolidate irreversibly because of the stickiness of the particles. Particulate gels are usually adhesive as well…