RHEOLOGY OF COMPLEX FLUID-FLUID INTERFACES: A UNIFIED APPROACH BASED ON NONEQUILIBRIUM THERMODYNAMICS

Surface rheological properties affect the dynamics of vesicles, nanoparticles, emulsion droplets, foam bubbles, polymer microcapsules, liquid jets, living cells, lung avioli, thin liquid films, and many other multiphase systems. Surface rheology is therefore relevant for a wide range of disciplines in the areas of physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, and medicine. Currently used descriptions of surface rheology have a number of limitations, and in particular are hard to generalize to the large deformation regime. Data are often analyzed with constitutive equations based on straightforward generalizations of models developed for describing bulk phase rheology. Since the latter are in general designed to describe incompressible materials, they are not guaranteed to describe highly compressible interfaces correctly. Here we discuss a unified approach to surface rheology based on nonequilibrium thermodynamics (NET) that provides a consistent set of balance and constitutive equations for the unambiguous determination of surface rheological parameters, both near and far beyond equilibrium. A closer integration of experimental surface rheology and multiphase nonequilibrium thermodynamics would clearly be beneficial for both disciplines.