Interfacial instabilitites in flow displacements of nano-particle suspensions

在过去的几年里，新技术已经允许制造非常小的颗粒（约百万分之一毫米），即纳米颗粒。这些颗粒在环境、石油、生物技术和制药工业等各个领域都有新的应用。由于它们的尺寸非常小，这种颗粒可以注入到具有非常小孔隙的介质中，并用于诸如提高油藏采收率或污染土壤修复等重要应用。随着这些新的应用出现了与如何跟踪和控制这些粒子在介质中的传输有关的重要问题。今天，确实需要优化这些颗粒的使用，但也要防止任何可能造成健康问题的纳米颗粒无法控制的迁移。

New techniques have allowed in the past years to manufacture very small particles (~1 millionth of a millimetre) that are known as nano-particles. These particles have lead to new applications in various fields such as the environmental, oil, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Due to their very small size, such particles can be injected in media that have very small pores and used for important applications such as the enhanced recovery of oil in reservoirs or the remediation of contaminated soils. With these new applications came important issues related to how to follow and control the transport of such particles in the media. Today, there is a real need to optimize the use of such particles but also to prevent any possible uncontrollable migration of the nano-particles that may pose health problems.