Interfacial instabilitites in flow displacements of nano-particle suspensions

在过去几年中，新技术已经允许制造非常小的颗粒（约百万分之一毫米），称为纳米颗粒。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。由于其非常小的尺寸，这些颗粒可以注入具有非常小的孔隙的介质中，并用于重要的应用，例如提高油藏中石油的采收率或修复受污染的土壤。随着这些新的应用，重要的问题是如何跟踪和控制这些颗粒在介质中的传输。如今，存在真实的需要优化这种颗粒的使用，而且还需要防止可能造成健康问题的纳米颗粒的任何可能的不可控的迁移。

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.