ESPCI web site
Colloids trapped at complex liquid interfaces
The physics of micron-sized particles trapped at liquid interfaces has been extensively studied from both fundamental and applied reasons. Model systems based on trapped microspheres have thus been used to study the physics of low-dimension systems. In the same time, colloidal particles are now commonly used in emulsification processes. If the basic components of the modelling (role of capillarity and contact angle...) are well-known, the quantitative analysis of the behaviour and the interactions of real trapped particles are usually complex and many theoretical questions are still opened.
In this seminar, i will report some of our recent experimental works. In a first part, I will describe and discuss several experiments focused on the dynamics of single particles trapped at an air-liquid interface when the contact angle, the shape of the particles and the interface are changed. In a second part, i will examine what happens when a complex fluid (nematic liquid crystal) instead of a simple liquid is used and show that the combination between capillarity and nematic elasticity gives rise to new self-organizing phenomena.