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Soft Matter Physics
Soft Matter refers to diverse materials such as polymers, colloids, granular materials or liquid crystals, that display complex features, as showing fluid or solid like properties depending on the external solicitation, anisotropic mechanical properties or the appearance of yield stresses
In all cases microscopic mechanisms play a crucial role in determining the macroscopic properties. In this lecture we will introduce the fundamental principles of Soft Matter Physics and treat some chosen examples, showing how:
- Van de Waals forces and electrostatic interactions are at the origin of intermolecular interactions, dictating the behavior of colloidal suspensions.
- The entropic elasticity of polymers chains determines their conformation at rest and under external flow and is reflected in their non-linear macroscopic rheology.
- In liquid crystals aligning torques create order in the microscopic director field giving rise to rise to a wealth of fascinating properties as structural color or defect dynamics dictating biological cell growth.
Our general approach will be to relate the microscopic properties or interactions to the resulting macroscopic behavior.
The fundamental lectures will be completed by examples from current experimental research and simple examples will be modelled in the tutorials with various theoretical methods such as statistical field theory, hydrodynamics, electrostatics, scaling arguments, symmetry arguments, tensorial calculus.
Outline
- Elementary interactions and colloids
- Complex fluids and rheology
- Suspensions
- Liquid crystals
- Polymers
- Active Matter
Syllabus
Prerequisites
Evaluation