From a device for measuring film thickness in vacuum, the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) has in the past two decades evolved into a versatile instrument for analyzing soft matter at solid/liquid and solid/gas interfaces that found applications in diverse fields including the life sciences, material science, polymer research and electrochemistry. As a consequence of this success, the QCM is n…
The Conference on Traffic and Granular Flow brings together international researchers from different fields ranging from physics to computer science and engineering to discuss the latest developments in traffic-related systems. Originally conceived to facilitate new ideas by considering the similarities of traffic and granular flow, TGF'15, organised by Delft University of Technology, now cover…
This thesis approaches impact resistance in dense suspensions from a new perspective. The most well-known example of dense suspensions, a mixture of cornstarch and water, provides enough impact resistance to allow a person to run across its surface. In the past, this phenomenon had been linked to "shear thickening" under a steady shear state attributed to hydrodynamic interactions or granular d…
This thesis presents experimental and theoretical investigations of the connection between the time asymmetry in the short-time evolution of particle clusters and the intrinsic irreversibility of turbulent flows due to the energy cascade. The term turbulence describes a special state of a continuous medium in which many interacting degrees of freedom are excited. One of the interesting phen…
This set of lectures provides an introduction to the structure, thermodynamics and dynamics of liquids, binary solutions and polymers at a level that will enable graduate students and non-specialist researchers to understand more specialized literature and to possibly start their own work in this field. Part I starts with the introduction of distribution functions, which describe the statist…
This book deals with those properties of non-equilibrium soft matter that deviate greatly from the bulk properties as a result of nanoscale confinement.The ultimate physical origin of these confinement effects is not yet fully understood. At the state of the art, the discussion on confinement effects focuses on equilibrium properties, finite size effects and interfacial interactions. However th…
This book addresses in an integrated manner all the critical aspects for building the next generation of biorecognition platforms - from biomolecular recognition to surface fabrication. The most recent strategies reported to create surface nano and micropatterns are thoroughly analyzed.℗ℓThis book℗ℓcontains descriptions of the types of molecules immobilized at surfaces that can be used …
This short monograph presents an analysis and design methodology for shape memory alloy (SMA) components such as wires, beams, and springs for different applications. The solid-solid, diffusionless phase transformations in thermally responsive SMA allows them to demonstrate unique characteristics like superelasticity and shape memory effects. The combined sensing and actuating capabilities of s…
This book presents a compact personal biography and a collection of works by Gabriele F. Giuliani - a distinguished condensed matter theorist who made important contributions to our understanding of collective effects in electronic materials. In 2012 he passed away after a long battle with cancer. In addition, the book features scientific contributions from some of Prof. Giuliani's former s…
This book presents an Ultrafast Low-Energy Electron Diffraction (ULEED) system that reveals ultrafast structural changes on the atomic scale. The achievable temporal resolution in the low-energy regime is improved by several orders of magnitude and has enabled the the melting of a highly-sensitive, molecularly thin layer of a polymer crystal to be resolved for the first time. This new experimen…