From polymers to colloids: Engineering the dynamic properties of hairy particles

For many years, colloidal hard spheres and polymeric coils served as model limiting cases of soft matter behavior. Softening the potential of interactions has been an obvious possibility for altering properties and has been explored in great detail with sterically interacting charged colloids. As the behavior of such (and technologically relevant) systems is very complex, it is desired to isolate the role of interactions and use well-characterized systems. Today, it is possible to achieve this goal by taking advantage of the capabilities of macromolecular and colloidal chemistry. We show how to use well-defined soft sphere systems interacting via excluded volume repulsions to generate a rich variety of phase states and materials properties. This approach provides opportunities for bridging the gap between polymers and colloids in terms of property variation, and thus designing soft systems with desired properties. At the same time, previously unexplored aspects of important open problems such as glass transition and effects of solvent on the dynamics of correlated systems are addressed. Appropriate blending of the two main classes of soft matter and further directing their assembly and dynamic response has now become a challenging new task. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.