Controlling interactions in real space across the lengthscales: love, hate and criticality
Paddy RoyallPolymers, liquid crystals, surfactants, and colloidal dispersions form the four historic pillars of soft
matter. For physicists, colloids were a relatively late entry into the field, driven in no small way by
the seminal work of Peter Pusey and Bill van Megen in their experimental realisation of hard
sphere phase behaviour, arguably the simplest non—trivial material. Since then, the ability to
manipulate the interactions between colloids, i.e. making them attract or repel one another so that
t hey can be treated as model atoms has led to many important discoveries.
I will review some of the work done using colloids which has led to many developments such as a
deeper understanding of criticality, crystallisation and a host of novel phenomena such as
re—entrant melting, before considering how knowledge gained from a soft matter approach to
manipulating interactions between constituent particles can be applied to other materials such as
proteins. Recently, a great deal of interest has been generated by active systems and towards
the end of the presentation I will explore analogies between active colloidal systems and a
model biological system of zebrafish.
The meeting will have a hybrid format, in person in the Gulliver library and by zoom at the link:
https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/94113852039?pwd=T1dsYzZYUXJqV1MrSm1MQW9ablM2QT09
ID de réunion : 941 1385 2039
Code secret : xtVn1b
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