Soft Matter Under Electric Field and Shear

Soft matter encompasses systems whose constituents are supramolecular species of sizes much larger than conventional molecules, e.g. colloids, ferro-fluids, emulsions, surfactant assemblies, liquid crystals, granular media and various bio-materials including DNA and proteins. This book deals with two important soft matter systems – colloidal suspensions and surfactant systems. Electric field has been used to control the aggregation of colloidal particles and this has led to a simple technology to improve the sensitivity of latex agglutination tests. Electric field has also been used to study the freezing transition in two dimensions. The surfactant system has been studied using bulk rheology. This book has a detailed introduction to soft matter systems and techniques used to study these systems. Rheology and video particle tracking has been described in detail. There is also a short tutorial on image processing and description of various experiments which can be performed using a commercial rheometer. This book should be useful to anyone who is interested in controlling the assembly of colloidal particles and also to someone who is interested in rheology and surfactant systems.