Soft matter

Soft matter or soft condensed matter is a type of matter that can be deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress which is of similar magnitude to thermal fluctuations.

The science of soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter physics. Soft materials include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, liquid crystals, flesh, and a number of biomaterials. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy (of order of kT), and that entropy is considered the dominant factor.^[1] At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. When soft materials interact favorably with surfaces, they become squashed without an external compressive force.^[2]

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter,"^[3] received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers.^[4]

^ Kleman, Maurice; Lavrentovich, Oleg D., eds. (2003). Soft Matter Physics: An Introduction. New York, NY: Springer New York. doi:10.1007/b97416. ISBN 978-0-387-95267-3.
^ Carroll, Gregory T.; Jongejan, Mahthild G. M.; Pijper, Dirk; Feringa, Ben L. (2010). "Spontaneous generation and patterning of chiral polymeric surface toroids". Chemical Science. 1 (4): 469. doi:10.1039/c0sc00159g. ISSN 2041-6520. S2CID 96957407.
^ "Soft matter: more than words". Soft Matter. 1 (1): 16. 2005. Bibcode:2005SMat....1...16.. doi:10.1039/b419223k. ISSN 1744-683X. PMID 32521835.
^ The Nobel Prize in Physics 1991. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 13 Feb 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1991/summary/

[:0-1] Kleman, Maurice; Lavrentovich, Oleg D., eds. (2003). Soft Matter Physics: An Introduction. New York, NY: Springer New York. doi:10.1007/b97416. ISBN 978-0-387-95267-3.

[2] Carroll, Gregory T.; Jongejan, Mahthild G. M.; Pijper, Dirk; Feringa, Ben L. (2010). "Spontaneous generation and patterning of chiral polymeric surface toroids". Chemical Science. 1 (4): 469. doi:10.1039/c0sc00159g. ISSN 2041-6520. S2CID 96957407.

[3] "Soft matter: more than words". Soft Matter. 1 (1): 16. 2005. Bibcode:2005SMat....1...16.. doi:10.1039/b419223k. ISSN 1744-683X. PMID 32521835.

[4] The Nobel Prize in Physics 1991. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 13 Feb 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1991/summary/

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