Soft and organic matter

Soft matter materials are highly important for industry, biology and everyday life. Polymers, colloids or nanostructured systems are used in drug delivery, paints, coatings and detergents, to name just a few. They are also the building blocks of natural products, including living matter.

The term soft matter is used for materials that have properties between those of hard solids and regular liquids and a tendency to form hierarchical structures. Often, they are soft or easily deformed and may be either elastic or viscous or have a combination of these properties. The wide range of macroscopic properties relates to the weak interactions between the constituents as well as their large range of internal relaxation processes. In our research we aim to understand how macroscopic properties of these materials are related to their structure on different length scales, down to atomic, as well as their relaxation spectra on the microscopic scale.

Graphic showing spheres in different colours distributed on a plane. The plane has dark depressions that are either empty or occupied by one sphere each. The spheres are not distributed randomly but form strings or small clusters. The cluster in the foreground consists of purple and orange spheres. Two other clusters, one green and gold and one blue and gold, are also visible. The spheres have a metallic hue and seem to be illuminated from above.

Self-assembly and formation of clusters of magnetic and non-magnetic particles dissolved in a ferrofluid.

Current research in this area includes the interactions of dispersed particles. We study effects of external influences such as magnetic or electric fields as well as stress on structure and phase behaviour. Of particular interest are systems with tunable interactions and how the interaction between constituents leads to phase formation. We also investigate adsorbed and self-assembled layers at interfaces. The design and preparation of interfacial structures is crucial to many modern materials and allows bottom-up design of new devices and materials.

Polymeric materials may be elastic and/or viscous depending on how an external force is applied. We are interested in this viscoelasticity at atomic length scales both in amorphous and crystalline polymer systems. We study how the internal relaxation times of molecules as well as their phase formation and reorganisation affect the elastic and viscous response. Of specific interest to our research are macroscopic flow instabilities that may occur in or at the boundary of materials and are related to the strong non-linearity of the response.

Selected publications

Contact

  • Max Wolff
  • Visiting address: Ångström Laboratory, Lägerhyddsvägen 1, Uppsala, House 4, floor 1 and House 6, floor 1.

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