Université de Fribourg

Relationship between rheology and structure of interpenetrating, deforming and compressing microgels

Conley, Gaurasundar M. ; Zhang, Chi ; Aebischer, Philippe ; Harden, James L. ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 2436

Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology, their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelasticity of suspensions made from microgels, are still not fully understood, in particular under dense packing conditions. Here we study the frequency-dependent...

Université de Fribourg

Structure and sedimentation kinetics of dense suspensions of fibroblast cells

Zenuni, Arbnor ; Zhang, Chi ; Haeni, Laetitia ; Rothen-Rutishauser, Barbara ; Scheffold, Frank

In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 43–46

We investigate the structure and the dynamics of dense suspensions of NIH 3T3 fibroblast cells. Using two-photon microscopy we obtain three dimensional (3D) images from which the size and the packing structure of the dense cell suspensions can be extracted. In addition, we analyse the global time-dependent behaviour of the suspensions by time-lapse measurements of cell sedimentation. Since...

Université de Fribourg

Observation of strongly heterogeneous dynamics at the depinning transition in a colloidal glass

Şenbil, Nesrin ; Gruber, Markus ; Zhang, Chi ; Fuchs, Matthias ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Physical Review Letters, 2019, vol. 122, no. 10, p. 108002

We study experimentally the origin of heterogeneous dynamics in strongly driven glass-forming systems. Thereto, we apply a well-defined force with a laser line trap on individual colloidal polystyrene probe particles seeded in an emulsion glass composed of droplets of the same size. Fluid and glass states can be probed. We monitor the trajectories of the probe and measure displacements and...

Université de Fribourg

Diffusing wave microrheology of highly scattering concentrated monodisperse emulsions

Kim, Ha Seong ; Şenbil, Nesrin ; Zhang, Chi ; Scheffold, Frank ; Mason, Thomas G.

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019, vol. 116, no. 16, p. 7766–7771

Motivated by improvements in diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) for nonergodic, highly optically scattering soft matter and by cursory treatment of collective scattering effects in prior DWS microrheology experiments, we investigate the low-frequency plateau elastic shear moduli G′p of concentrated, monodisperse, disordered oil-in- water emulsions as droplets jam. In such experiments, the...

Université de Fribourg

Brownian dynamics of colloidal microspheres with tunable elastic properties from soft to hard

Yoon, Jiwon ; Cardinaux, Frédéric ; Lapointe, Clayton ; Zhang, Chi ; Mason, Thomas G. ; Ahn, Kyung Hyun ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, 2018, vol. 546, p. 360–365

We study the Brownian thermal motion of a colloidal model system made by emulsifying hot liquid α-eicosene wax into an aqueous surfactant solution of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). When this waxy oil-in-water emulsion is cooled below α- eicosene's melting point of Tc ≃ 25 °C, the microscale emulsion droplets solidify, effectively yielding a dispersed particulate system. So, the...

Université de Fribourg

Improved diffusing wave spectroscopy based on the automatized determination of the optical transport and absorption mean free path

Zhang, Chi ; Reufer, Mathias ; Gaudino, Danila ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Korea-Australia Rheology Journal, 2017, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 241–247

Diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) can be employed as an optical rheology tool with numerous applications for studying the structure, dynamics and linear viscoelastic properties of complex fluids, foams, glasses and gels. To carry out DWS measurements, one first needs to quantify the static optical properties of the sample under investigation, i.e. the transport mean free path l* and the...

Université de Fribourg

Dynamical and structural signatures of the glass transition in emulsions

Zhang, Chi ; Gnan, Nicoletta ; Mason, Thomas G ; Zaccarelli, Emanuela ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2016, vol. 2016, no. 9, p. 094003

We investigate structural and dynamical properties of moderately polydisperse emulsions across an extended range of droplet volume fractions phgr, encompassing fluid and glassy states up to jamming. Combining experiments and simulations, we show that when phgr approaches the glass transition volume fraction ${{\phi}_{g}}$ , dynamical heterogeneities and amorphous order arise within the...

Université de Fribourg

Structure of marginally jammed polydisperse packings of frictionless spheres

Zhang, Chi ; O'Donovan, Cathal B. ; Corwin, Eric I. ; Cardinaux, Frédéric ; Mason, Thomas G. ; Möbius, Matthias E. ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Physical Review E, 2015, vol. 91, no. 3, p. 032302

We model the packing structure of a marginally jammed bulk ensemble of polydisperse spheres. To this end we expand on the granocentric model [Clusel et al., Nature (London) 460, 611 (2009)], explicitly taking into account rattlers. This leads to a relationship between the characteristic parameters of the packing, such as the mean number of neighbors and the fraction of rattlers, and the radial...