Straining of colloids at textural interfaces

Colloids at interfaces: Pinned down.

In 1903 Walter Ramsden found that an air bubble placed in a liquid suspension of microscopic particles “can be seen to pick up the particles ... and to retain them obstinately ...”1 Ramsden had discovered the strong affinity of colloidal particles to fluid interfaces, an affinity that a century later can be harnessed to make microstructured materials such as Pickering emulsions, colloidosomes a...

Colloids at Liquid-liquid Interfaces

Straining soft colloids in aqueous nematic liquid crystals.

Liquid crystals (LCs), because of their long-range molecular ordering, are anisotropic, elastic fluids. Herein, we report that elastic stresses imparted by nematic LCs can dynamically shape soft colloids and tune their physical properties. Specifically, we use giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) as soft colloids and explore the interplay of mechanical strain when the GUVs are confined within aque...

Trapping and assembly of living colloids at water-water interfaces.

We study the assembly of inert and living colloids in a two-phase water-water system that provides an environment that can sustain bacteria, providing a new structure with rich potential to confine and structure microbial communities. The water-water system, formed via phase separation of a casein and xanthan mixture, forms a 3-D structure of coexisting casein-rich and xanthan-rich phases. Fluo...

Liquid-vapor interfaces of patchy colloids.

We investigate the liquid-vapor interface of a model of patchy colloids. This model consists of hard spheres decorated with short-ranged attractive sites ("patches") of different types on their surfaces. We focus on a one-component fluid with two patches of type A and nine patches of type B (2A9B colloids), which has been found to exhibit reentrant liquid-vapor coexistence curves and very low-d...