Synergy between the crack pattern and substrate elasticity in colloidal deposits.

Desiccation cracks in colloidal deposits occur to release the excess strain energy arising from the competition between the drying induced shrinkage of the deposit and its adhesion to the substrate. Here we report remarkably different morphology of desiccation cracks in the dried patterns formed by the evaporation of sessile drops containing colloids on elastomer (soft) or glass (stiff) substrates. The change in the crack pattern, i.

Cracking to curling transition in drying colloidal films.

Drying-induced cracking is widely encountered in nature and is of fundamental interest in industrial applications. During desiccation, the evolution of water content is nonlinear. Considering the inhomogeneous procedure of desiccation, it is worth considering whether water content will affect the crack pattern formation.

Imbibition and structure of silica nanoporous media characterized by neutron imaging.

Hypothesis: Colloidal silica dispersions dried under controlled conditions form solid gels that display mechanical properties similar to those observed in several practical processes. An understanding of their structural characteristics and liquid flow properties can therefore help establish these gels as an alternative family of model materials to study practical porous systems.

Experiments: Neutron radiography is a non-destructive technique well-adapted to study hydrogen-rich domains in porous materials due to the high attenuation power of hydrogen.

The solute mechanical properties impact on the drying of dairy and model colloidal systems.

The evaporation of colloidal solutions is frequently observed in nature and in everyday life. The investigation of the mechanisms taking place during the desiccation of biological fluids is currently a scientific challenge with potential biomedical and industrial applications. In the last few decades, seminal works have been performed mostly on dried droplets of saliva, urine and plasma.

Influence of Bénard-Marangoni instability on the morphology of drying colloidal films.

The drying of colloidal suspensions is a very complex process leading to a sol-gel transition induced by solvent evaporation. The resulting film can even crack and delaminate. In this study, we investigate the drying process of a colloidal suspension with a highly volatile solvent and we show for initially millimeter-thick layers that the resulting pattern of delaminated plates considerably differs from what is usually observed for aqueous colloidal suspensions.

Imbibition on a porous layer: dynamical and mechanical characterization.

Solvent penetration in porous layers was analyzed using dynamical and mechanical characterization. Spreading dynamics of a solvent drop in a porous substrate provided parameters of the porous medium such as permeability and porosity. These measurements are relevant for many porous systems, for example paintings or porous varnishes and resins… We present direct visualizations of the drop as well as of the wet zone during the imbibition process and we evidence three distinct regimes.

Structuration of the Surface Layer during Drying of Colloidal Dispersions.

During evaporative drying of a colloidal dispersion, the structural behavior at the air-dispersion interface is of particular relevance to the understanding of the consolidation mechanism and the final structural and mechanical properties of the porous media. The drying interface constitutes the region of initial drying stress that, when accumulated over a critical thickness, leads to crack formation. This work presents an experimental study of top-down drying of colloidal silica dispersions with three different sizes (radius 5, 8, and 13 nm).

Drying colloidal systems: Laboratory models for a wide range of applications.

The drying of complex fluids provides a powerful insight into phenomena that take place on time and length scales not normally accessible. An important feature of complex fluids, colloidal dispersions and polymer solutions is their high sensitivity to weak external actions. Thus, the drying of complex fluids involves a large number of physical and chemical processes.

Crack opening: from colloidal systems to paintings.

Shrinkage cracks are observed in many materials, particularly in paintings where great interest lies in deducing quantitative information on the material with the aim of proposing authentication methods. We present experimental measurements on the crack opening induced by the drying of colloidal layers and compare these results to the case of a pictorial layer. We propose a simple model to predict the crack width as a function of the thickness of the drying layer, based on the balance between the drying stress buildup and the shear frictional stress with the substrate.

Influence of mechanical properties of nanoparticles on macrocrack formation.

We present an experimental investigation of drying suspensions of both hard and soft nanolatex spheres. The crack formation is examined as a function of the proportion of hard and soft deformable particles, leading to tunable elastic properties of the drying film. In our experimental systems, no crack formation could be observed below an onset value of the proportion in hard spheres phi approximately 0.