Foams, sand, ice-cream, liquid crystals (e.g. in computer screens) and blood are all examples of everyday soft matter. Soft matter is the term given to materials whose structure and properties are generally governed by thermal effects and external forces. Even though they are commonly found materials, with many industrial applications, they often display some fascinating properties and new physics.
Interface physics involves the behaviour at or near interfaces (unsurprisingly). Everything from the swelling behaviour of clay, how to measure pH in a solution to the health of cartilage in your knees is all influenced by interfacial properties.Indeed soft matter and interfacial physics often are intimately connected.
Examples of Recent Publications
- Schaller, FM, GE Schröder-Turk, T Pöschel, The microscopic structure of mono-disperse granular heaps and sediments of particles on inclined surfaces , Soft matter 12 (13), 3184-3188, 2016.
- Schaller, F., Neudecker, M., Saadatfar, M., Delaney, G., Schroeder-Turk, G., Schröter, M., Local Origin of Global Contact Numbers in Frictional Ellipsoid Packings, Physical Review Letters, 114(15), 1 – 5, 2015.
- Schaller, FM, SC Kapfer, JE Hilton, PW Cleary, K Mecke, C De Michele, T Schilling, M Saadatfar, M Schröter, GW Delaney, GE Schröder-Turk, Non-universal Voronoi cell shapes in amorphous ellipsoid packs EPL (Europhysics Letters), 111(2): 24002, 2015
- Parsons, DF, A Salis, Hofmeister effects at low salt concentration due to surface charge transfer, Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science, 23: 41–49, 2016.
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Duignan, TT, DF Parsons, BW Ninham, Hydronium and hydroxide at the air–water interface with a continuum solvent model Chemical Physics Letters, 635: 1-12, 2016.
Physics & Nanotechnology 