Dynamics of Soft Matter: Neutron Applications provides an overview of neutron scattering techniques that measure temporal and spatial correlations simultaneously, at the microscopic and/or mesoscopic scale. These techniques offer answers to new questions arising at the interface of physics, chemistry, and biology. Knowledge of the dynamics at these levels is crucial to understanding the soft matter field, which includes colloids, polymers, membranes, biological macromolecules, foams, emulsions towards biological & biomimetic systems, and phenomena involving wetting, friction, adhesion, or microfluidics. Emphasizing the complementarities of scattering techniques with other spectroscopic ones, this volume also highlights the potential gain in combining techniques such as rheology, NMR, light scattering, dielectric spectroscopy, as well as synchrotron radiation experiments. Key areas covered include polymer science, biological materials, complex fluids and surface science.

The book systematically introduces the mathematical models and solutions of generalized hydrodynamics of soft-matter quasicrystals (SMQ). It provides methods for solving the initial-boundary value problems in these systems. The solutions obtained demonstrate the distribution, deformation and motion of the soft-matter quasicrystals, and determine the stress, velocity and displacement fields. The interactions between phonons, phasons and fluid phonons are discussed in some fundamental materials samples. Mathematical solutions for solid and soft-matter quasicrystals are compared, to help readers to better understand the featured properties of SMQ.

Practical applications of soft-matter dynamics are of vital importance in material science, chemical engineering, biophysics and biotechnology, food processing, plastic industry, micro- and nano-system technology, and other technologies based on non-crystalline and non-glassy materials. Principles of Soft-Matter Dynamics. Basic Theories, Non-invasive Methods, Mesoscopic Aspects covers fundamental dynamic phenomena such as diffusion, relaxation, fluid dynamics, normal modes, order fluctuations, adsorption and wetting processes. It also elucidates the applications of the principles and of the methods referring to polymers, liquid crystals and other mesophases, membranes, amphiphilic systems, networks, and porous media including multiphase and multi-component materials, colloids, fine-particles, and emulsions. The book presents all formalisms, examines the basic concepts needed for applications of soft-matter science, and reviews non-invasive experimental techniques such as the multi-faceted realm of NMR methods, neutron and light quasi-elastic scattering, mechanical relaxation and dielectric broadband spectroscopy which are treated and compared on a common and consistent foundation. The standard concepts of dynamics in fluids, polymers, liquid crystals, colloids and adsorbates are comprehensively derived in a step-by-step manner. Principles and analogies common to diverse application fields are elucidated and theoretical and experimental aspects are supplemented by computational-physics considerations. Principles of Soft-Matter Dynamics. Basic Theories, Non-invasive Methods, Mesoscopic Aspects appeals to graduate and PhD students, post-docs, researchers, and industrial scientists alike.

This volume comprises the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study In stitute held at Geilo, Norway, April 6 -16 1999. The ASI was the fifteenth in a series held biannually on topics related to cooperative phenomena and phase transitions, in this case applied to soft condensed matter and its configurations, dynamics and functionality. It addressed the current experimental and theoretical knowledge of the physical properties of soft condensed matter such as polymers, gels, complex fluids, colloids, granular materials and biomaterials. The main purpose of the lectures was to obtain basic understanding of important aspects in relating molecular configurations and dynamics to macroscopic properties and biological functionality. To our knowledge, the term Soft Condensed Matter was actually coined and used for the first time in 1989 at Geilo and some selected topics of soft matter were also given at Geilo in 1991, 1993 and 1995. A return to this subject 10 years after its instigation thus allowed a fresh look and a possibility for defining new directions for research.

This book gives a detailed description on mathematical theory of elasticity and generalized dynamics of solid quasicrystals and its applications.The Chinese edition of the book Mathematical Theory of Elasticity of Quasicrystals and Its Applications was published by the Beijing Institute of Technology Press in 1999, written by Prof Tian-You Fan. In this English edition of the book, the phonon-phason dynamics, defect dynamics and hydrodynamics of solid quasicrystals are included, so the scope of the book is beyond elasticity. Hence, the title in this edition is changed to Mathematical Theory of Elasticity and Generalized Dynamics of Quasicrystals and Its Applications. This book is the first and only monograph in the scope of quasicrystals since first published in 1999 in China and worldwide. In this edition, the two-dimensional quasicrystals of second kind, soft-matter quasicrystals and photonic bade-gap and application of photonic quasicrystals are added.This book combines the mechanical and physical behavior of quasicrystals and mathematical physics, which may help graduate students and researchers in the fields of new materials, condensed matter physics, applied mathematics and engineering science.

This book deals with those properties of non-equilibrium soft matter that deviate greatly from the bulk properties as a result of nanoscale confinement.The ultimate physical origin of these confinement effects is not yet fully understood. At the state of the art, the discussion on confinement effects focuses on equilibrium properties, finite size effects and interfacial interactions. However this is a limited vision which does not fully capture the peculiar behaviour of soft matter under confinement and some exotic phenomena that are displayed. This volume will be organized in the following three main themes. Equilibration and physical aging: treating non-equilibrium via the formal methodology of statistical physics in bulk, we analyse physical origin of the non-equilibrium character of thin polymer. We then focus on the impact of nanoconfinement on the equilibration of glasses of soft matter (a process of tremendous technological interest, commonly known as physical aging), comparing the latest trends of polymers in experiments, simulations with those of low-molecular weight glass formers. Irreversible adsorption: the formation of stable adsorbed layers occurs at timescales much larger than the time necessary to equilibrate soft matter in bulk. Recent experimental evidence show a strong correlation between the behaviour of polymers under confinement and the presence of a layer irreversibly adsorbed onto the substrate. This correlation hints at the possibility to tailor the properties of ultrathin films by controlling the adsorption kinetics. The book reports physical aspects of irreversible chain adsorption, such as the dynamics, structure, morphology, and crystallization of adsorbed layers. Glass transition and material properties: this section of the book focuses on the spread of absolute values in materials properties of confined systems, when measured by different experimental and computation techniques and a new method to quantify the effects of confinement in thin films and nanocomposites independently on the investigation procedure will be presented.

Soft matter and biological systems pose many challenges for theoretical, experimental and computational research. From the computational point of view, these many-body sytems cover variations in relevant time and length scales over many orders of magnitude. Indeed, the macroscopic properties of materials and complex fluids are ultimately to be deduced from the dynamics of the microsopic, molecular level. In these lectures, internationally renowned experts offer a tutorial presentation of novel approaches for bridging these space and time scales in realistic simulations. This volume addresses graduate students and nonspecialist researchers from related areas seeking a high-level but accessible introduction to the state of the art in soft matter simulations.

This extensive and comprehensive collection of lectures by world-leading experts in the field introduces and reviews all relevant computer simulation methods and their applications in condensed matter systems. Volume 2 offers surveys on numerical experiments carried out for a great number of systems, ranging from materials sciences to chemical biology, including supercooled liquids, spin glasses, colloids, polymers, liquid crystals, biological membranes and folding proteins.

Zusammenfassung: The book provides a detailed quantitative study and characterization of the physics of the thermal and viscoelastic behavior of mainly amorphous materials, and addresses a readership of both undergraduate (Part I and the two first chapters of Part II) and graduate students and junior researchers (Parts II and III). Though the discussion and examples concentrate on polymer materials, Part II illustrates the potential universality of the proposed most recent treatment - a Cooperative Theory of Materials Dynamics (CTMD) - and its ability to portray the 11 major physical characteristics of the materials' behavior by an alternative view of the thermal equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics at the "micro-scale", the still challenging problem of the glass transition and glass transition temperature, how partial crosslinking or crystallization limits the response, the expected impact of molecular packing, and of a few other open challenges. Part III discusses three specific domains where new applications and extensions of CTMD might be explored, while three Appendixes collect a few quantitative details and extensions of the treatment

This book presents a compilation of self-contained chapters covering a wide range of topics within the broad field of soft condensed matter. Each chapter starts with basic definitions to bring the reader up-to-date on the topic at hand, describing how to use fluid flows to generate soft materials of high value either for applications or for basic research. Coverage includes topics related to colloidal suspensions and soft materials and how they differ in behavior, along with a roadmap for researchers on how to use soft materials to study relevant physics questions related to geometrical frustration.