arXiv subjects

Brigitte Pansu

Publications and source records attributed to Brigitte Pansu.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

A Bouquet for Apollonius: Focal Conics in Sessile Cholesteric Droplets

Focal conic domains, are defects characteristic of layered liquid crystal phases. Their association can built flowers where petals are the ellipses of the Dupin cyclides involved in these defect. We report here the observation of focal conic flowers in cholesteric droplets sessile on a glass surface and surrounded by glycerol. The observation of the droplets in different directions helps to solve the 3D architecture of the flower. The effects of the droplet size and of the pitch value are also reported.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2021

Gold nanoparticle supracrystals mechanics under pressure: the role of the soft matrix

Nanocrystals, used as building blocks, may self-assemble in long-range ordered assemblies socalled supracrystals. Different structures FCC, BCC but also Frank-Kasper phases have been observed and the roles of the soft ligands surrounding the rigid crystalline cores in the self-assembly process is not yet well understood and need further study. The mechanical behavior under hydrostatic pressure of 3D single FCC crystals built by gold nanoparticles has been investigated using HP-SAXS and compared with pure alkane, corresponding to the ligand chain. No structural transition has been observed up to 12 GPa, but a large increase of the supracrystals bulk modulus has been measured.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction studies of lipid-peptide mixed monolayers during shear flow

Grazing Incidence X-ray Diffraction (GIXD) studies of monolayers of biomolecules at the air-water interface give quantitative information of in-plane packing, coherence lengths of the ordered diffracting crystalline domains and the orientation of hydrocarbon chains. Rheo-GIXD measurements revel quantitative changes in the monolayer under shear. Here we report GIXD studies of monolayers of Alamethicin peptide, DPPC lipid and their mixtures at the air-water interface under the application of steady shear stresses. The Alamethicin monolayer and the mixed monolayer show flow jamming transition. On the other hand, pure DPPC monolayer under the constant stress flows steadily with a notable enhancement of area/molecule, coherence length, and the tilt angle with increasing stress, suggesting fusion of nanocrystallites during flow. The DPPC-Alamethicin mixed monolayer shows no significant change in the area/DPPC molecule or in the DPPC chain tilt but the coherence length of both phases (DPPC and Alamethicin) increases suggesting that the crystallites of individual phases are merging to bigger size promoting more separation of phases in the system during flow. Our results show that Rheo-GIXD has the potential to explore in-situ molecular structural changes under rheological conditions for a diverse range of confined biomolecules at the interfaces.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Metallurgy of soft spheres with hard core: from BCC to Frank-Kasper phases

Understanding how soft particles can fill the space is still an open question. Structures far from classical FCC or BCC phases are now commonly experimentally observed in many different systems. Models based on pair interaction between soft particle are at present much studied in 2D. Pair interaction with two different lengths have been shown to lead to quasicrystalline architectures. It is also the case for a hard core with a square repulsive shoulder potential. In 3D, global approaches have been proposed for instance by minimizing the interface area between the deformed objects in the case of foams or micellar systems or using self-consistent mean field theory in copolymer melts. In this paper we propose to compare a strong van der Waals attraction between spherical hard cores and an elastic energy associated to the deformation of the soft corona. This deformation is measured as the shift between the deformed shell compared to a corona with a perfect spherical symmetry. The two main parameters in this model are: the hard core volume fraction and the weight of the elastic energy compared to the van der Waals one. The elastic energy clearly favours the BCC structure but large van der Waals forces favors Frank and Kasper phases. This result opens a route towards controlling the building of nanoparticle superlattices with complex structures and thus original physical properties.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2015

Short-range dynamics of a nematic liquid-crystalline phase

Using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, we studied the dynamics in the nematic phase of a nanorodsuspension. The collective diffusion coefficient in the plane perpendicular to the director varies sharply with the wave vector. Combining the structure factor and the diffusion coefficient, we find that the hydrodynamic function of the phase decreases by more than a factor of 10 when going from length scales comparable to the interparticle distance toward larger values. Thus, the collective dynamics of the nematic phase experiences strong and scale-dependent slowing down, in contrast with isotropic suspensions of slender rods or of spherical particles.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2015

Repulsion Between Inorganic Particles Inserted Within Surfactant Bilayers

We study by synchrotron small-angle x-ray scattering highly aligned lamellar phases of a zwitterionic surfactant, doped with monodisperse and spherical hydrophobic inorganic particles as a function of particle concentration. Analysis of the structure factor of the two-dimensional fluid formed by the particles in the plane of the bilayer gives access to their membrane-mediated interaction, which is repulsive, with a contact value of about 4k$_{\text{B}}$T and a range of 14 Å. Systematic application of this technique should lead to a better understanding of the interaction between membrane inclusions.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2015

The interaction of charged nanoparticles at interfaces

We study charged nanoparticles adsorbed onto surfactant bilayers using small-angle scattering of synchrotron radiation. The in-plane interaction of the particles is well described by a DLVO component (measured independently in solution) and a repulsive dipolar interaction due to the presence of the interface, with an amplitude close to the theoretical prediction. We prove that charged nanoparticles at soft interfaces are well described by the classical model of Poisson-Boltzmann and van der Waals terms; as a corollary, they do not experience the like-charge attraction reported in the literature for some systems of micron-sized spheres at interfaces.

cond-mat.soft↗