Responsive smart materials from jammed, thick and slow matter.

by Dr Emanuela Del Gado - (Polymer Physics, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Sunday 11 Apr 2010, 11:00 → 13:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Corbino (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio E. Fermi)

Glasses and gels are ubiquituous in our practical life and form when, in an initially liquid system, particles get stuck in a microscopically disordered state in which they are able to support external stresses. Different structural and dynamical heterogeneities may characterize the arrest of the particles and eventually affect the mechanical and transport properties of the solid with a huge impact for engineering applications. I will discuss recent studies investigating non-affine deformations of inherent structures of supercooled liquids, the elasticity of attractive colloidal glasses and the network induced relaxation dynamics in colloidal gels.