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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/M88839/01
Title: EFFECTIVE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MESOSCOPIC PARTICLES IN COMPLEX FLUIDS
Principal Investigator: Hansen, Professor JP
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Chemistry
Organisation: University of Cambridge
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 January 2000 Ends: 31 December 2002 Value (£): 151,966
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Complex fluids & soft solids
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Chemicals Food and Drink
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Overcoming the enormous gap between mesoscopic and molecular length and timescales in complex fluids, in particular in colloidal dispersions, is one of the major contemporary challenges in any statistical description. Integrating out the molecular degrees of freedom of the solvent, microscopic ions, or polymer-coils leads effective interactions between the mesoparticles that are largely entropic in nature. The objectives of the present project are: a) to put archetypical effective interactions like the DLVO potential between charged-colloids and depletion interactions on a firm statistical basis; b) to clarify some conceptual difficulties associated with the reduction of an initial multi-scale, multi-component system to an effect one -component system, in particular as regards fluctuations and phase-coexistence ; c) to extend the density functional analysis to a variety of more complex situations, in close connections with current experimental investigations. The emphasis will be on mesoscopic mixtures involving non-spherical particles (e.g. rod-colloids), soft particles like polymer coils or membranes. Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations will be out to derive accurate effective colloid-polymer and polymer-polymer interactions. In a final state of the project the applicability of the effective potential picture to dynamical phenomena will be explored.
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Organisation Website: http://www.cam.ac.uk