The small-deformation behaviour of Newtonian emulsion drops covered with a viscoelastic layer of adsorbed proteins (globular proteins and random coil protein) is investigated in shear flow and compared to emulsions prepared with a low molecular weight surfactant (SDS). Drop deformation experiments are performed with dilute emulsions in the rheometer using light microscopy as well as rheo-SALS [...

This work investigates the modeling of the surface tension and the interface of liquid mixtures. Nine binary liquid mixtures of (DMSO+alcohols), (2-Propanol+2,2,4-trimethylpentane), (Tetrahydrofuran+2-Propanol), (Tetrahydrofuran+2,2,4-trimethylpentane), and (ethano+glycerol) are considered. Additionally, one ternary liquid mixture of (Tetrahydrofuran+2-Propanol+2,2,4-trimethylpenta...

Interfacial liquid layers play a central role in a variety of phenomena ranging from friction to molecular recognition. Liquids near a solid surface form an interfacial layer where the molecular structure is different from that of the bulk. Here we report atomic resolution three-dimensional images of electrolyte solutions near a mica surface that demonstrate the existence of three types of inte...

The isotropic to nematic transition in a system of soft spherocylinders is studied by means of grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. The probability distribution of the particle density is used to determine the coexistence densities of the isotropic and the nematic phases. The distributions are also used to compute the interfacial tension of the isotropic-nematic interface, including an anal...

Microarray techniques use a combinatorial approach to assess complex biochemical interactions. The fundamental goal is simultaneous, large-scale experimentation analogous to the automation achieved in the semiconductor industry. However, microarray deposition inherently involves liquids contacting solid substrates. Liquid droplet shapes are determined by surface and interfacial tension forces, ...

Coexistence between the isotropic and the nematic phase in suspensions of rods is studied using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations with a bias on the nematic order parameter. The biasing scheme makes it possible to estimate the interfacial tension gamma(IN) in systems of hard and soft rods. For hard rods with LD=15, we obtain gammaIN approximately 1.4kBT/L2, with L the rod length, D the ro...

A significant episteric ("around a solid") distortion of the hydrogen-bond structure of water is promoted by solutes with nanoscale surface detail and physico-chemical complexity, such as soluble natural proteins. These structural distortions defy analysis because the discrete nature of the solvent at the interface is not upheld by the continuous laws of electrostatics. This work derives and va...

Combining analytic calculations, computer simulations, and classical density functional theory we determine the interfacial tension of orientable two-dimensional hard rectangles near a curved hard wall. Both a circular cavity holding the particles and a hard circular obstacle surrounded by particles are considered. We focus on moderate bulk densities (corresponding to area fractions up to 50%) ...

We consider an ideal gas of infinitely rigid rods near a perfectly repulsive wall, and show that the interfacial tension of a surface with rods on one side is lower when the surface bends towards the rods. Surprisingly we find that rods on both sides of surfaces also lower the energy when the surface bends. We compute the partition functions of rods confined to spherical and cylindrical open sh...

A novel microfluidic approach to measure interfacial tension of immiscible fluids rapidly is reported. This method rests upon quantitative force balance analysis of drop formation dynamics in a coaxial microfluidic device. The values of interfacial tension for several two liquids without/with surfactants are measured. These measurements compare well with those measured by the commercial interfa...