Colloids articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Magnus effect refers to rotating objects developing a lift force when travelling through a fluid. It normally vanishes at microscopic length scales but now a very large Magnus effect is demonstrated for spinning colloids in viscoelastic fluids.

    • Xin Cao
    • , Debankur Das
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • Article |

    The yielding transition in concentrated colloidal suspensions and emulsions lacks a universal description. A unified state diagram is now shown to underlie yielding for these materials, analogous to the van der Waals phase diagram for non-ideal gases.

    • Stefano Aime
    • , Domenico Truzzolillo
    •  & Luca Cipelletti

  • Article |

    Dynamic arrest in amorphous gels has so far been ascribed to glass transition. Now, experiments reveal a hierarchical structural ordering in dilute colloidal gels driven by the local potential energy, making this type of gel distinct from amorphous glasses.

    • Hideyo Tsurusawa
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article |

    A bursting bubble produces a jet drop previously estimated to be too large to contribute to aerosolization. Oil-coated bubbles produce fast and thin jets, which break up into much smaller drops with potential implications for airborne transmission.

    • Zhengyu Yang
    • , Bingqiang Ji
    •  & Jie Feng

  • Article |

    Premelting refers to the formation of a thin liquid film on a crystal’s surface before it properly melts. Now, a similar mechanism is shown to occur before solid–solid transitions in colloidal crystals: the formation of a polymorphic crystalline layer.

    • Xipeng Wang
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Yilong Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organelles in the cell are not encapsulated in a membrane—they are liquid-like domains formed through phase separation. The liquid-like nature of such domains leads to adhesive interactions between the cytoskeleton filaments and organelles.

    • Thomas J. Böddeker
    • , Kathryn A. Rosowski
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article |

    Whether and when a material deforms elastically or plastically depends on its microstructure. Experiments on two-dimensional colloidal systems show that in disordered materials, packing density, stress and a microstructure-related entropy govern deformations.

    • K. L. Galloway
    • , E. G. Teich
    •  & P. E. Arratia

  • Letter |

    Active matter exhibits a plethora of collective phenomena in both biological and artificial systems. In a model system of colloidal rollers, polar states in active liquids can be controlled.

    • Bo Zhang
    • , Hang Yuan
    •  & Alexey Snezhko

  • News & Views |

    The flagella of microorganisms have provided inspiration for many synthetic devices, but they’re typically not easy to produce. A new class of swimmer makes it look simple by spontaneously growing a tail that it can whip to self-propel.

    • Sophie Ramananarivo

  • Article |

    The authors investigate the role of spherical confinement and curvature-induced topological defects on the crystallization of charged colloids. They conclude that crystallization in spherical confinement is due to a combination of thermodynamics and kinetic pathways.

    • Yanshuang Chen
    • , Zhenwei Yao
    •  & Peng Tan

  • Research Highlight |

    • Elizaveta Dubrovina

  • Article |

    The authors investigate out-of-equilibrium crystallization of a binary mixture of sphere-like nanoparticles in small droplets. They observe the spontaneous formation of an icosahedral structure with stable MgCu2 phases, which are promising for photonic applications.

    • Da Wang
    • , Tonnishtha Dasgupta
    •  & Alfons van Blaaderen

  • News & Views |

    The transport properties of many two-dimensional systems are strongly affected by the proximity of a periodic pattern. Colloidal particles are now shown to have preferred sliding routes due to competing symmetries between two unmatched crystalline surfaces.

    • Pietro Tierno

  • Letter |

    Active colloidal particles are shown to be capable of aggregating into stable spinning clusters that constitute self-powered microgears. The demonstration reveals a new design principle for micromachinery using dissipative building blocks.

    • Antoine Aubret
    • , Mena Youssef
    •  & Jérémie Palacci

  • News & Views |

    There is growing evidence for the kinetics of homogeneous nucleation being a multi-step process. Colloid experiments and simulations now suggest that heterogeneous nucleation is no exception.

    • Rajesh Ganapathy
    •  & Ajay K. Sood

  • Article |

    Controlled crystal growth can be achieved by initiating nucleation on a substrate — but the mechanisms at play are still poorly understood. Experiments and simulations now reveal conditions for the growth of defect-free crystals of charged colloids.

    • Shunto Arai
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • News & Views |

    Ensembles of magnetic colloids can undergo an instability triggering the formation of clusters that move faster than the particles themselves. The many-body process relies on hydrodynamics alone and may prove useful for load delivery in fluidics.

    • Pietro Tierno

  • Letter |

    Collections of rolling colloids are shown to pinch off into motile clusters resembling droplets sliding down a windshield. These stable dynamic structures are formed through a fingering instability that relies on hydrodynamic interactions alone.

    • Michelle Driscoll
    • , Blaise Delmotte
    •  & Paul Chaikin

  • News & Views |

    Simple models have given us surprising insight into how animals flock, but most assume they do so through a homogeneous landscape. Colloidal experiments now suggest that a little disorder can have unexpected — and spectacular — effects.

    • C. J. Olson Reichhardt
    •  & C. Reichhardt

  • Letter |

    Our understanding of collective animal behaviour generally assumes that flocks and herds move through homogeneous environments. Colloidal experiments suggest that flocking can be distorted or even suppressed by the introduction of disorder.

    • Alexandre Morin
    • , Nicolas Desreumaux
    •  & Denis Bartolo

  • Article |

    A study of a composite soft-matter nanomechanical system consisting of a rotating ring of optically trapped colloidal particles confining a set of untrapped colloids demonstrates the possibility of gearwheel-like torque transmission on the nanoscale.

    • Ian Williams
    • , Erdal C. Oğuz
    •  & C. Patrick Royall

  • News & Views |

    When a bubble bursts at a liquid–gas interface, a portion of gas is released from the liquid. Now, another, counterintuitive process is reported: rapid motion generated by bubble-bursting transports oil droplets from the surface into the interior of a volume of water.

    • Jens Eggers

  • Article |

    When a bubble bursts on reaching a surface, mass transfer from the liquid to the gas phase can occur—aerosol dispersion. Now, the inverse transport process is reported: submicrometre-sized oil droplets, formed during bubble-bursting, are zipped across the interface to the liquid phase.

    • Jie Feng
    • , Matthieu Roché
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • News & Views |

    According to classical nucleation theory, a crystal grows from a small nucleus that already bears the symmetry of its end phase — but experiments with colloids now reveal that, from an amorphous precursor, crystallites with different structures can develop.

    • László Gránásy
    •  & Gyula I. Tóth

  • Article |

    Assemblies of colloidal particles provide a micrometre-scale analogue of atomic and molecular liquids and solids. Now, real-time visualization of the liquid-solid transition in systems of spherical colloids reveals complex pathways involving precursors of hexagonal close-packed, body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic symmetry.

    • Peng Tan
    • , Ning Xu
    •  & Lei Xu

  • News & Views |

    A simulation study of a model that mimics certain colloidal particles reveals a surprising low-temperature triumph of entropy, whereby the liquid state persists down to zero temperature.

    • Jeppe C. Dyre

  • Research Highlights |

    • Abigail Klopper

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