Related papers: Composite colloidal assembly by critical Casimir f…
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phase behavior of a binary mixture of colloids with opposite adsorption preferences in a critical solvent. As a result of the attractive and repulsive critical Casimir forces, the…
If colloidal solute particles are suspended in a solvent close to its critical point, they act as cavities in a fluctuating medium and thereby restrict and modify the fluctuation spectrum in a way which depends on their relative…
The critical Casimir effect provides a thermodynamic analogue of the well-known quantum mechanical Casimir effect. It acts between two surfaces immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture, and results from the confinement of concentration…
Spatial confinement of a near-critical medium changes its fluctuation spectrum and modifies the corresponding order parameter distribution. These effects result in effective, so-called critical Casimir forces (CCFs) acting on the confining…
From experimental studies it is well-known that colloidal particles suspended in a near-critical binary solvent exhibit interesting aggregation phenomena, often associated with colloidal phase transitions, and assumed to be driven by…
We investigate the behavior of colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine in the presence of a chemically patterned substrate. Close to the critical point of the mixture, the particles are subjected to…
We study the phase behavior of colloidal suspensions the solvents of which are considered to be binary liquid mixtures undergoing phase segregation. We focus on the thermodynamic region close to the critical point of the accompanying…
Critical Casimir forces can play an important role for applications in nano-science and nanotechnology, owing to their piconewton strength, nanometric action range, fine tunability as a function of temperature, and exquisite dependence on…
The phase behavior of a single type of colloid C suspended in near-critical solvents is known to be very rich. Motivated in part by recent experiments we consider a mixture of two colloidal types C1 and C2 in a binary solvent close to its…
The spatial suppression of order parameter fluctuations in a critical media produces Critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces. This scenario is realized in a critical binary mixture near the demixing transition point that…
Colloids immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces (CCFs) because they confine its concentration fluctuations and influence the latter via effective surface fields. To date, CCFs have only been…
We present a numerical study of the effective potential $V_\mathrm{eff}$ between two hard-sphere colloids dispersed in a solvent of interacting particles, for several values of temperature and solvent density, approaching the solvent…
We study theoretically and experimentally the solvent-mediated critical Casimir force acting on colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine and close to substrates which are chemically patterned with…
We consider an ensemble of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a near-critical solvent such as a binary liquid mixture close to its critical demixing point. The emerging long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter of…
If a fluctuating medium is confined, the ensuing perturbation of its fluctuation spectrum generates Casimir-like effective forces acting on its confining surfaces. Near a continuous phase transition of such a medium the corresponding order…
We study the fluctuation-induced Casimir interactions in colloidal suspensions, especially between colloids immersed in a binary liquid close to its critical demixing point. To simulate these systems, we present a highly efficient cluster…
We study the critical Casimir interaction between two spherical colloids immersed in a binary liquid mixture close to its critical demixing point. The surface of each colloid prefers one species of the mixture with the exception of a…
In soft and condensed matter physics, effective interactions often emerge as a result of the spatial confinement of a fluctuating field. For instance, microscopic particles in a binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces…
Percolation and critical phenomena show common features such as scaling and universality. Colloidal particles, immersed in a solvent close to criticality, experience long-range effective forces, named critical Casimir forces. %These…
We experimentally demonstrate that critical Casimir forces in colloidal systems can be continuously tuned by the choice of boundary conditions. The interaction potential of a colloidal particle in a mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine has…