Soft Matter Physics
By: edited by Mohamed Daoud, Claudine E. Williams
Contributors: Williams, Claudine E., editor; SpringerLink (Online service)
Published: 1999
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9783662038451
Subjects: Materials science; Thin Films Surfaces and Interfaces; Physical organic chemistry; Polymers; Surfaces (Physics); Physical and theoretical Chemistry; Polymer Sciences
Description: What do colloids, fractals, liquid crystals, and polymers have in common? Nothing at first sight. Yet the distance scales, the energy transfers, the way these objects react to an external field are very similar. For the first time, this book offers an introduction to the physics of these soft materials in one single volume. A variety of experiments and concepts are presented, including the phenomena of capillarity and wetting, fractals, small volumes and large surfaces, colloids, surfactants, giant micelles and fluid membranes, polymers, and liquid crystals. Each chapter is written by experts in the field with the aim of making the book accessible to the widest possible scientific audience: graduate students, lecturers, and research scientists in physics, chemistry, and other disciplines. Nobel Prize winner Pierre-Gilles de Gennes inspired this book and has written a foreword.
Table of contents: title: 1. Droplets: Capillarity and Wetting; title: 2. Fractals; title: 3. Small Volumes and Large Surfaces: The World of Colloids; title: 4. The Physicochemistry of Surfactants; title: 5. From Giant Micelles to Fluid Membranes: Polymorphism in Dilute Solutions of Surfactant Molecules; title: 6. Polymers Formed from Self-Assembled Structures; title: 7. Polymer Materials; title: 8. Polymer Solutions: A Geometric Introduction; title: 9. Liquid Crystals: Between Order and Disorder.