We describe various systems in soft matter that have the common characteristic to present a great relation surface/volume. In a first part, we will present these elementary systems which are or bubbles. We will show how their conformation and their behavior can be justified by the environment in which we dive them: this covers nucleation, anchorage, impregnation and self-propulsion situations. We also discuss a number of dynamical situations, like liquid speading, fluid deposition and various interfacial instabilities.

 

But the soft matter is also the science of complex fluids and we will show, in a second par, some example of such materials:

  1. the suractant solutions (adsorption at interfaces, organizations in volume);
  2. the colloidal solutions (stability, rheology) ;
  3. the polyeric solutions (ideal or Flory chain, rheology of solutions, gels);
  4. the soap foils and (formation, aging, rheology).

All these examples have been selected, as much for their fundamental importance as for the many applications where they intervene. Because our goal is also to show in this course how a pluridisciplinary science could build itself from practical and applied questions.

 

Course language: English