Recent studies of athermal systems such as dry grains and dense, non-Brownian suspensions have shown that shear can lead to solidification through the process of shear jamming in grains and discontinuous shear thickening in suspensions. The similarities observed between these two distinct phenomena suggest that the physical processes leading to shear-induced rigidity in athermal materials are u...

We determine radial distribution functions for charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions for various volume fractions. By means of two independent inversion routines based on (i) the Ornstein–Zernike equation and (ii) the inverse Monte Carlo method, we extract effective colloid–colloid pair potentials from the distribution functions. Working at a fixed salinity, these potentials would not depend ...

The mechanical properties of a suspension can be dramatically altered by adding a small amount of a secondary fluid that is immiscible with the bulk phase. The substantial changes in the strength of these capillary suspensions arise due to the capillary force inducing a percolating particle network. Spatial information on the structure of the particle networks is obtained using confocal microsc...

We illustrate in this paper the interest of cryo-field-emission gun scanning electron microscopy (cryo-FEGSEM) to investigate the stability of alumina suspensions. The stability is investigated through viscosity, zeta potential, total organic carbon measurements, and cryo-FEGSEM observations. We focus on two examples: the effect of the quantity of ammonium polyacrylate as dispersant and the eff...

We report on the steady-state and femtosecond-nanosecond (fs-ns) behaviour of 8-hydroxypyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonate (pyranine, HPTS) and its interaction with mesoporous silica based materials (MCM-41) in both solid-state and dichloromethane (DCM) suspensions in the absence and presence of water. In the absence of water, HPTS forms aggregates which are characterized by a broad emission spectrum and...