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Rémi Dreyfus
Compass Laboratory, UMI 3251, CNRS/UPENN/Solvay
After a brief introduction of my overall research interests, I will focus on a specific part of my work : the structural and macroscopic properties of colloidal complex fluids. Colloidal complex fluids are suspensions of tiny particles of diameter ranging from tens of nanometers to tens of microns. When the particles are driven out of equilibrium, they can exhibit a specific structural organization, which usually detemines the macroscopic properties of the fluid. For this reason, studying the suspension structure is of importance.
In this talk, I will present the structure of colloidal fluids as the suspension is driven out of equilibrium, either by jamming or in a flow. Two and three-dimensional systems of micrometer-sized colloids were considered and characterized by studying their structure factor using microscopy and static small-angle light scattering. We found that suspensions tend to organize in a so-called hyperuniform organization, a type of organization that has attracted interest over the past decade due to its potential exciting photonic properties.
Our work unravels novel ways of assembling hyperuniform materials from colloidal suspensions, opening new routes for bottom-up assemblies of new functional materials.