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Dinsdag 7 april 2009
dr. D.G.A.L. Aarts (Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, University of
Oxford)
Colloidal interfaces in confinement
The rapidly evolving field of microfluidics, in which fluids are manipulated at a micro- or even nanoscopic scale, raises new questions about the behaviour of liquids at increasingly small scales. One convenient way to explore this is by making use of colloidal systems, which are well-known to display similar behaviour as atoms or molecules, but at a micro- instead of a nanometer scale, such that direct observation by optical (e.g. confocal) microscopy becomes possible. I will focus on mixtures of colloids and polymers displaying coexistence between a colloidal gas (rich in polymer, poor in colloid) and a colloidal liquid (poor in polymer, rich in colloid) phase. Due to the colloidal lengthscale the interfacial tension is much lower than in the atomic or molecular analogue (down to nN/m instead of mN/m) and as a consequence the thermal capillary waves at the interface can be observed by means of confocal microscopy. I will show that combining colloid-polymer mixtures with microfluidics opens up a host of exciting opportunities to study the dynamic and static behaviour of fluid interfaces in confinement.
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