Soft Condensed Matter
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Research relating to colloidal suspensions, surfactants and polymers. Significantly, biology is almost entirely made up of ‘living soft matter’ – globular proteins are colloids, DNA is a stiff polymer, and the lipids forming cell membranes are essentially surfactants. Soft matter has been studied by chemists, chemical engineers and biologists for many years. It is increasingly clear, however, that these systems show generic properties independent of chemical details. For example, all polymers share certain properties simply because they are long strings of balls performing Brownian motion. This is the central reason why physicists are getting interested. Studying the generic properties of soft matter can give fresh insights into a broad range of fundamental questions that cut across the whole of condensed matter physics, e.g. concerning the nature of disordered solids.
Soft Matter Physics research at the University of Edinburgh
Image: Detail from Blanco et al. https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.00471 , underlying data: Blanco, Elena; Hodgson, Daniel JM; Hermes, Michiel; Besseling, Rut; Hunter, Gary L; Chaikin, Paul M; Cates, Michael E; Van Damme, Isabella; Poon, Wilson CK. (2019). Conching chocolate is a prototypical transition from frictionally jammed solid to flowable suspension with maximal solid content, [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. School of Physics. Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/2515.
Items in this Collection
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Probing the dynamics of turbid colloidal suspensions using Differential Dynamic Microscopy
Dataset for the manuscript entitled 'Probing the dynamics of turbid colloidal suspensions using Differential Dynamic Microscopy': Few techniques can reliably measure the dynamics of colloidal suspensions or other soft ... -
Changing the flow profile and resulting drying pattern of dispersion droplets via contact angle modification
Dataset corresponding to arXiv pre-print of: "Changing the flow profile and resulting drying pattern of dispersion droplets via contact angle modification". -
Bicontinuous Soft Solids with a Gradient in Channel Size Designed for Energy Storage Applications
Examples of bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels ("bijels") are presented with a designed gradient in the channel size along the sample. These samples are created by quenching binary fluids which have a gradient ... -
Characterising shear-induced dynamics in flowing complex fluids using differential dynamic microscopy
Microscopic dynamics reveal the origin of the bulk rheological response in complex fluids. In model systems particle motion can be tracked, but for industrially relevant samples this is often impossible. Here we adapt ... -
Diffusion, phase behavior and gelation in a two-dimensional layer of colloids in osmotic equilibrium with a polymer reservoir
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the ... -
Particle sizing for flowing colloidal suspensions using flow-differential dynamic microscopy
Dataset for "Particle sizing for flowing colloidal suspensions using flow-differential dynamic microscopy". Particle size is a key variable in understanding the behaviour of the particulate products that underpin much of ... -
Turning a yield-stress calcite suspension into a shear-thickening one by tuning inter-particle friction
We show that a suspension of non-Brownian calcite particles in glycerol-water mixtures can be tuned continuously from being a yield-stress suspension to a shear-thickening suspension without a measurable yield stress by ... -
Interaction between Nearly Hard Colloidal Spheres at an Oil-Water Interface v2
We show that the interaction potential between sterically stabilised, nearly hard-sphere (PMMA-PLMA) colloids at a water-oil interface has a negligible unscreened-dipole contribution, suggesting that models previously ... -
SUPERSEDED - Interaction between Nearly Hard Colloidal Spheres at an Oil-Water Interface
## This dataset has been replaced by the one which can be found at https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/2848 . ## We show that the interaction potential between sterically stabilised, nearly hard-sphere (PMMA-PLMA) colloids at a ... -
Dataset for: "A combined rheometry and imaging study of viscosity reduction in bacterial suspensions"
Dataset supporting the manuscript "A combined rheometry and imaging study of viscosity reduction in bacterial suspensions" accepted in PNAS. -
Testing the Wyart-Cates model for non-Brownian shear thickening using bidisperse suspensions [Dataset]
Raw simulation data and processed simulation and experimental data to support the article "Testing the Wyart-Cates model for non-Brownian shear thickening using bidisperse suspensions" by Ben M. Guy et al, published in ... -
The role of friction in the yielding of adhesive non-Brownian suspensions
Yielding behavior is well known in attractive colloidal suspensions. Adhesive non-Brownian suspensions, in which the interparticle bonds are due to finite-size contacts, also show yielding behavior. We use a combination ... -
Liquid Migration in Shear Thickening Suspensions Flowing through Constrictions
Dense suspensions often become more dilute as they move downstream through a constriction. We find that as a shear-thickening suspension is extruded through a narrow die and undergoes such liquid migration, the extrudate ... -
Dynamic optical rectification and delivery of active particles
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of Escherichia coli bacteria whose motility is photoactivated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the ... -
Granulation and suspension rheology: a unified treatment
Mixing a small amount of liquid into a powder can give rise to dry-looking granules; increasing the amount of liquid eventually produces a flowing suspension. We perform experiments on these phenomena using Spheriglass, ... -
Competing Timescales Lead to Oscillations in Shear-Thickening Suspensions
Competing timescales generate novelty. Here, we show that a coupling between the timescales imposed by instrument inertia and the formation of interparticle frictional contacts in shear-thickening suspensions leads to ... -
Dynamics-dependent density distribution in active suspensions
Dataset for the manuscript entitled 'Dynamics-dependent density distribution in active suspensions': Self-propelled colloids constitute an important class of intrinsically non-equilibrium matter. Typically, such a particle ... -
Dataset for "Helical and oscillatory microswimmer motility statistics from differential dynamic microscopy"
Raw data (i.e. simulated videos) supporting the manuscript "Helical and oscillatory microswimmer motility statistics from differential dynamic microscopy" published in New Journal of Physics. Research grant: ERC-AdG-340877 ... -
Conching chocolate is a prototypical transition from frictionally jammed solid to flowable suspension with maximal solid content
The mixing of a powder of 10-50μm primary particles into a liquid to form a dispersion with the highest possible solid content is a common industrial operation. Building on recent advances in the rheology of such 'granular ... -
Dataset for "High-throughput characterisation of bull semen motility using differential dynamic microscopy"
Dataset supporting the manuscript "High-throughput characterisation of bull semen motility using differential dynamic microscopy" published in PLOSone.
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