U.S.-Netherlands Cooperative Research on Colloids and Liquid Crystals

该奖项支持布兰代斯大学的Robert Meyer教授和Seth Fraden教授以及一些研究生与荷兰乌得勒支大学化学系H. N. W. Lekkerkerker教授及其团队在胶体和液晶研究方面的合作。这两个小组在液晶（美国方面）和胶体（荷兰方面）领域具有互补的专业知识，并且在形成液晶的胶体领域有重叠的兴趣。将对每个实验室都有专长的专门材料进行联合研究，以便增进对这些重要系统的了解。例如，布兰迪斯小组最近一直在研究易受磁场诱导有序的丝状噬菌体病毒。乌得勒支小组已经能够合成晶体薄铝石的棒状胶体颗粒，并在制备带有专门有机涂层的胶体颗粒方面发展了专业知识。在目前的合作研究中，这些研究路线汇集在一起，研究棒状胶体颗粒，这种颗粒在液体悬浮中形成有序状态。合作者将通过实验控制胶体粒子的性质及其相互作用，并将对系统进行详细的理论分析。随着复杂流体及其应用领域的发展，胶体和液晶的研究日益受到重视。这些胶体系统不仅本身就很有趣，而且是技术和工业中许多重要应用的基础，它们还可以作为模型系统，用于测试许多其他重要物理系统的基本思想。

This award supports Professors Robert Meyer and Seth Fraden and some graduate students of Brandeis University to collaborate in studies of colloids and liquid crystals with Professor H. N. W. Lekkerkerker and his group of the Chemistry Department of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The two groups have complementary expertise in the field of liquid crystals (U.S. side) and colloids (Dutch side) and have overlapping interests in the area of colloids which form liquid crystals. Joint research will be carried out on specialized materials on which each of the laboratories is expert, in order to advance understanding of these important systems. For example, the Brandeis group has been working recently on filamentous bacteriophage viruses that are susceptible to magnetic field induced ordering. The Utrecht group has been able to synthesize rod-like colloidal particles of the crystal Boehmite, and has developed expertise in preparing colloidal particles with specialized organic coatings. These lines of research come together in the current collaboration in studies of rod-like colloidal particles which form ordered states in suspension in a liquid. The collaborators will experimentally control the properties of the colloidal particles and their interaction, and will make a detailed theoretical analysis of the systems. The topic of colloids and liquid crystals is one of increasing importance, as the field of complex fluids and their applications grow. As well as being interesting in their own right, and the basis of many important applications in technology and industry, these colloidal systems serve as model systems for testing fundamental ideas about many other important physical systems.