Imaging the dynamics of soft materials at microscale and nanoscale
Soft materials are materials that are soft. They can usually be deformed easily by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations at about room temperature, which makes their dynamic behaviors of great interest and importance. In this thesis, imaging tools such as bright-field and dark-field optical microscopes and liquid-phase transmission electron microscope, have been utilized to capture the dynamics of three distinct yet typical soft materials in situ at different length scales: colloids, polymeric chains, and nanobubbles. While conventional interests have been focused on the equilibrium structures and properties of soft materials, we explore their non-equilibrium dynamics under external driving forces or agitations, such as electric fields, chemical gradients, and electron beam irradiation. Image processing, single particle tracking, and statistical analysis are combined to study the rich phenomena we observed.
Soft Materials, Janus Colloids, Active Matter, Nanobubble
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign