Essentials of Soft Matter Science

by Francoise Brochard-Wyart, Pierre Nassoy, Pierre-Henri Puech

Overview

Authored by world-leading physicists, this introductory textbook explores the basic principles of polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, wetting, and foams. It is a practical ‘toolbox’ for readers to acquire basic knowledge in the field and facilitate further reading and advanced courses. Undergraduate students in physics, biology, and the medical sciences will learn the basics of soft matter physics, in addition to scaling approaches in the spirit of the Nobel prize laureate in physics in 1991, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, the inventor of soft matter physics and close collaborator to author Françoise Brochard-Wyart.

Features:

• Accessible and compact approach
• Contains exercises to enhance understanding
• All chapters are followed by a short 1-2 page "insert chapter" which serve as illustrations with concrete examples from everyday life (e.g. the Paris Metro, a zebrafish, a gecko, duck feathers etc.)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498773966
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	08/02/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	290
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Françoise Brochard-Wyart is a French theoretical physicist. She was born in 1944 in Saint-Étienne in France. Currently she is a professor of theoretical soft matter physics at the Curie Institute. She studied at École Normale Supérieure de Cachan from 1964 to 1968 and obtained a degree in physics. Following her degree she studied for a PhD in Liquid Crystals under the supervision of Pierre-Gilles De Gennes. She obtained her PhD in 1974. Following her PhD she went on to study the dynamics of polymers at the Collège de France. In 1986 she was made a professor of physical chemistry at Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University. Here she focused her research on phenomena involving mixing and on the physics of interfaces. In 1991 she joined the Curie Institute and began research on biophysics. She is a member of Institut Universitaire de France. She was awarded the Jean Ricard Prize from the French Physical Society in 1998.

Pierre Nassoy is an experimentalist physicist. He was born in 1968 in Thionville in France. Currently, he is a CNRS senior scientist at the Institut d’Optique d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux. He studied at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de Paris (ESPCI) and obtained an engineering diploma. Then he obtained a PhD in 1996 in Monomolecular Langmuir Films under the supervision of Francis Rondelez. He then did a postdoc in biophysics in Vancouver, Canada (advisor: Evan Evans). He was junior CNRS scientist interested in cell biophysics at the Institut Curie until 2012.

Pierre-Henri Puech is a researcher at LAI Lab, Marseille, France. His research interests centre around soft condensed matter and biophysics; particularly T cell recognition, mechanics, and signalling in addition to toxoplasma mechanics and adhesion and mechanics in cancer.

Table of Contents

1.Introduction. 2. Soft Matter. 3. Phase Transitions. 4. Interfaces. 5. Liquid Crystals. 6. Surfactants. 7. Polymers. 8. Soft Matter in Everyday Life. 9. Soft Matter Technology. 10. Soft Matter in Biology. 11. Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

‘Choice Outstanding Title’

"Three physicists (one theoretician; two experimentalists, one in biophysics) adopt an intuitive and practical style to present the fundamentals of soft matter physics. Make no mistake: the style is accessible and revealing, but the underlying science is profound. Brochard-Wyart (Sorbonne Univ.) was a collaborator and former student of the late Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (originator of soft matter physics, 1991 Nobel laureate in physics). The authors lay claim to the style of de Gennes (and reference their class notes) in their method of presentation, including its organization and range of topics.
There are two broad groupings: chapters 1–7 cover definition and characterization of soft matter, then interfaces, phase transitions, liquid crystals, surfactants, and polymers, offering simple calculations (order of magnitude estimates) and scaling law arguments. Part 2 (chapters 8–10) covers a range of applications: self-cleaning surfaces, biomimetic adhesion, optical applications, and biological applications from DNA to tissue engineering. Many examples are based on everyday household phenomena. Each chapter provides a short bibliography. Any student (primarily in physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering) or researcher will enjoy reading this unique book. To benefit fully, readers need some background in electricity and magnetism, chemistry, fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics. This reader has rarely encountered a book so accessible, yet so thought provoking.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals."
—J. Lambropoulos, University of Rochester in CHOICE October 2020).

'This is an excellent book to acquire the basic knowledge of soft matter science, not only for students in physics, biology, and the medical sciences, but also for students in chemistry and the material sciences. As a chemist, I enjoy very much with the text, which provides both wonderful examples from everyday life and elegant illustrations of cutting-edge researches in laboratory, all in a comprehensive and pedagogic way. The book is also to read for pleasure by scientists in other fields who wish to browse through an "impressionist" survey of soft matter science'.

— Dr. Min-Hui Li, CNRS, Chimie ParisTech, Paris Sciences and Letters University, France

From the Publisher