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The challenge of creating foams and emulsions with well-controlled size distribution and properties is encountered in many structured materials, such as food formulations and consumer care products. These products, like ice cream for example, must remain stable over long shelf lifetimes while their microstructure dictates product performance and consumer satisfaction. In this paper, researchers from the Soft Materials group present a strategy to halt dissolution of particle-coated air bubbles.

A team of researchers from UK, Japan and Switzerland led by Andrei Gusev (Polymer Physics) explored the use of a two-phase analytical micromechanics model to predict the viscoelastic attributes of the phase-separated binary polymer blends with the complicated sub-micron morphology. The outcomes indicated a great opportunity for using the micromechanics models to analyze how the blend morphology affects the measured properties, using unaltered bulk attributes of the constituent phases.

Surface stress, also known as surface tension, is a fundamental material property of any interface. However, measurements of solid surface stress in traditional engineering materials, such as metals and oxides, have proven to be very challenging. In this study, researches from Soft and Living Materials and other gourps take advantage of the high compliance and large elastic deformability of a soft polymer gel to directly measure solid surface stress as a function of strain.

Surface stress, also known as surface tension, is a fundamental material property of any interface. However, measurements of solid surface stress in traditional engineering materials, such as metals and oxides, have proven to be very challenging. In this study, researches from the Soft and Living Materials group take advantage of the high compliance and large elastic deformability of a soft polymer gel to directly measure solid surface stress as a function of strain.

Dr. Peter Beltramo, currently a postdoc in the soft materials group, will start in January 2018 as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts. We wish him all the best in Amherst.