Soft Condensed Matter: Polymers, Colloids, Gels, Liquid Crystals (De Gruyter STEM) [9783119146326]

Overview

Soft Condensed Matter guides the reader from elementary concepts in thermodynamics and interfacial physics to complex systems like colloids, liquid crystals and gels. It covers experimental techniques to analyze soft materials, such as rheology, X-ray, neutron scattering and imaging techniques. Surfactants and polymers are essential ingredients in soft materials and the book reviews their physico-chemical properties, phase transitions as a function of concentration and temperature to provide much insight into the interactions of components in these systems. The role of molecular organization and orientation in 2D monolayers and in bulk is explored where various interactions between polymers, surfactants, oils and water exhibit interesting physico-chemical properties to make these systems multifunctional. The book also focuses on various applications of soft matter across diverse disciplines in physics, biology and electronics.  A Mathematical Toolbox is provided to aid the reader with detailed derivation of the various formulae.