Soft Matter, Volume 2: Complex Colloidal Suspensions

Soft Matter encompasses a wide range of systems of varying components, including synthetic and biological polymers, colloids, and amphiphiles. The distinguishing features of these systems is their characteristic size, which is much larger than that of their atomic counterparts, and their characteristic energy, which is much smaller. Because of their ability to assemble themselves into complex structures, they form the major components of biological systems and technological applications.

This second volume of the unique interdisciplinary "Soft Matter" series comprehensively describes colloids and their properties.
The structural and thermodynamic properties of mixtures of rod–like and spherical colloids and of mixtures colloids and polymers, as well as the dynamical behavior of rod–like colloids are treated in depth. Again leading scientists have contributed articles that both introduce readers to this field, and serve as a source of reference for experts.


Phase behavior of rod–like viruses and virus/sphere mixtures
Field theory of polymer–colloid interactions
Rod–like Brownian particles in shear flow


Gerhard Gompper studied Physics at the Ludwig–Maximilians–Universitaet Muenchen, where he received his Physics Diploma and Ph.D. in Physics in the group of Herbert Wagner. After a postdoctoral stay with Michael Schick at the University of Washington in Seattle, he returned to Munich to earn his habilitation. An assignment as a staff scientist at the Max–Planck–Institute for Colloid– and Interface Science in Berlin–Teltow from 1994 to 1999 preceded his joint appointment as a director at the
Institute for Solid–State Physics at the Research Center Juelich and as a full professor at the University of Cologne. He was recently honored with the Erwin–Schroedinger–Award for interdisciplinary research on the efficiency–boosting effect of amphiphilic polymers in microemulsions.

Michael Schick obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at Stanford University under Felix Bloch. After a post–doctoral position with Paul Zilsel at Case Western Reserve University, he joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 1969. His interests have included phase transitions in lower dimensional systems, wetting phenomena, microemulsions, the phase behavior
of block copolymers and of lipids, and the fusion of biological membranes. He has been honored with Fellowship in the American Physical Society, and a Humboldt Foundation Research Award spent at the Ludwig–Maximilians–Universitaet Muenchen where he worked with Gerhard Gompper. He is married to the scholar of Norwegian Literature, Katherine Hanson, with whom he lives on their floating home in Seattle′s Portage Bay. He is an avid, amateur cellist.

"Considered as a whole, these two volumes form a good beginning to a comprehensive treatment of this fast–growing field of research. One certainly hopes that the series will be extended to cover some other, equally important, aspects, such as the glass transition in colloidal suspensions. These volumes definitely belong on the desk of every experimentalist working in this field, and they will undoubtedly also be useful for introductory courses on this subject."
Angewandte Chemie

"...a unique series, holding great promise, strongly emphasizing the current state of the art in this field, as well as looking towards the future, and by doing so, inspiring new generations of scientists. Overall, this is an excellent and most useful initiative, which can be highly recommended to the research community and to advanced graduate students primarily in physics. However, physical and colloidal chemists and materials scientists will also benefit from this work."
Advanced Materials