Discover the secrets of Soft Matter with us!
Studies were carried out using the innovative method based on the analysis of relative volumes occupied by coexisting phases, yielding high-resolution data. This innovative automatized visual method, was described in detail in ref. Fluid PhaseEquilibria, 540, 112979.
This primary method suffers from some inherent experimental problems. First, the offer of commercial thermostats enabling the optical ‘eye-view’ observation is (very) limited and most often associated with small windows, restricting observations. There are also problems with the observational temperature range, particularly if the temperature stabilization and control better than 0.02 K is required. Second, it is a long-time experiment, often lasting days and requiring permanent attention. Third, possible supercooling of mixtures with non-critical concentrations can lead to the biasing scatter of detected binodal demixing temperatures.
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Soft Matter systems have common features, such as the dominance of elements or local structures on the mesoscale, combined with their relatively weak interactions, which turns out to be sufficient to obtain a tendency to self-organize with even a small change in parameters. This additionally leads to extraordinary sensitivity to even minor endogenous and exogenous factors, e.g., nanoparticles and pressure. In the case of the latter, relatively low pressures P~1 GPa, or even much lower ones, can lead to phases/states with exotic features, often persisting after decompression.
Worth stressing, that for "classical hard matter" systems, a pressure similar to that at the Earth's core (~300 GPa) is typically required, and the resulting "exotic" properties most often disappear upon decompression.
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