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Understanding soft glassy materials using an energy landscape approach

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 1031–1036 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Many seemingly different soft materials—such as soap foams, mayonnaise, toothpaste and living cells—display strikingly similar viscoelastic behaviour. A fundamental physical understanding of such soft glassy rheology and how it can manifest in such diverse materials, however, remains unknown. Here, by using a model soap foam consisting of compressible spherical bubbles, whose sizes slowly evolve and whose collective motion is simply dictated by energy minimization, we study the foam’s dynamics as it corresponds to downhill motion on an energy landscape function spanning a high-dimensional configuration space. We find that these downhill paths, when viewed in this configuration space, are, surprisingly, fractal. The complex behaviour of our model, including power-law rheology and non-diffusive bubble motion and avalanches, stems directly from the fractal dimension and energy function of these paths. Our results suggest that ubiquitous soft glassy rheology may be a consequence of emergent fractal geometry in the energy landscapes of many complex fluids.

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Figure 1: Motions of bubbles in a foam resemble spatially correlated Lévy walks.
Figure 2: Avalanche-like rearrangements release energy, displace particles and lead to unusual shear stress fluctuations.
Figure 3: Configuration space paths are self-similar fractal curves parameterized by contour length and time.
Figure 4: The energy gradient along the configuration space path is a generalized random walk, generating avalanche-like behaviour.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to A. J. Liu, D. J. Durian, E. R. Weeks, J. Sethna, C. P. Goodrich and J. Lin for useful discussions. H.J.H. acknowledges support from US Department of Education GAANN Fellowship P200A120246.

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  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6393, USA

    Hyun Joo Hwang, Robert A. Riggleman & John C. Crocker

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Contributions

J.C.C. and R.A.R. designed the study. H.J.H. performed the study, analysed the data and prepared the figures. J.C.C., R.A.R. and H.J.H. interpreted the data, and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Robert A. Riggleman or John C. Crocker.

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Hwang, H., Riggleman, R. & Crocker, J. Understanding soft glassy materials using an energy landscape approach. Nature Mater 15, 1031–1036 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4663

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