Natural wax-assisted anisotropic crystallization on hierarchical polydimethylsiloxane sponge: Harnessing interfacial surface energy for efficient oil-water mixture and nanoemulsion separation.

Micro-centrifuge: Controlling coffee ring effect with surface acoustic waves on a patterned substrate.

Cultivating critical thinking skills in colloidal subjects is difficult due to the intricacy of abstract concepts, even though they are pertinent to daily life. This study seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) learning model in improving high school students' critical thinking skills in colloid science. This pre-experimental study employed a one-group pretest-posttest design with 36 11th-grade science students chosen via purposive sampling. The research instrument comprised an essay test formulated according to Facione’s critical thinking indicators. The findings demonstrated a substantial enhancement in students’ average scores, rising from 32.55 to 75.14, accompanied by a Normalized Gain (N-gain) of 0.635 (moderate). An analysis based on indicators showed that the POE model was best at helping students improve their deduction and inference skills, but it still needed work on helping them figure out how trustworthy information sources are. This study concludes that the POE model is effective in enhancing scientific argumentation; however, it necessitates supplementary scaffolding to fortify students' metacognitive skills in the validation of external information.

Interfacial behavior from the atomic blueprint: Machine learning-guided design of spatially functionalized α-SiO2 surfaces.

Advances in the production, purification, and concentration of bacteriophage bionanoparticles for biomedical applications.

Nanoparticle‐stabilized Pickering emulsions (PEs) have recently emerged as a transformative class of soft nanostructures bridging colloid science and biomedical engineering. Distinct from conventional surfactant or polymer-stabilized emulsions, PEs are stabilized...

Volume 8 of the book series ‘Progress in Colloid and Interface Science’ is dedicated to emulsions and their building blocks, the adsorption layers at the surface of emulsion drops and the liquid films between the drops [...]

Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated dermatological disorder characterized by keratinocyte hyperproliferation and persistent inflammation, representing a significant therapeutic challenge. Conventional topical therapies are often limited by inadequate skin penetration, poor drug stability, and systemic toxicity, necessitating the development of advanced drug delivery platforms. Recent progress in colloid and interface science has enabled the design of nanocarrier systems including solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers, nanoemulsions, and liposomes that optimize drug-skin interactions at the nanoscale. Through interface engineering, these carriers improve drug solubility, stability, and controlled release, while enhancing epidermal localization and minimizing off-target exposure. Lipid-based nanosystems, in particular, leverage the skin's lipid pathways to achieve higher drug accumulation in psoriatic lesions, thereby improving therapeutic outcomes and patient compliance. Preclinical and early clinical studies with drugs such as methotrexate and cyclosporine have demonstrated enhanced lesion resolution, reduced side effects, and superior safety profiles when delivered via nanocarriers. Nevertheless, the clinical translation of these systems is often hindered by challenges such as large-scale reproducibility, formulation stability, and regulatory complexity. Interface-engineered nanocarriers address these limitations by employing biocompatible materials, scalable synthesis techniques, and targeted design strategies that enhance safety, efficacy, and translational feasibility. This review integrates mechanistic insights from colloid and interface engineering with translational perspectives on formulation scalability, regulatory pathways, and long-term safety evaluation. Collectively, interface-tailored nanocarriers represent a transformative approach for precision-driven, effective, and patient-centered topical therapy of psoriasis.

Nature offers many intriguing examples of hierarchically self-assembled mesophases, such as lamellar, gyroid, hexagonal, and cholesteric phases. These structures are typically believed to emerge from complex, competing enthalpic interactions, as observed in block copolymers and amphiphilic surfactants. Here, using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that even simple achiral hard particles with distorted tetrahedral shapes and purely excluded-volume interactions can spontaneously self-assemble into a diverse range of mesophases and liquid crystal phases, including the unexpected emergence of chiral structures. We attribute the formation of these phases to geometric frustration in the orientational ordering of neighboring particles, induced by their particle shape. The system resolves this frustration by coupling it with an energetically less favorable elastic deformation mode in the orientational ordering, such as twist or splay. We show that simple shape descriptors, such as anisotropy or biaxiality, predict the self-assembly behavior: rod-like particles stabilize cholesteric and twisted lamellar phases, plate-like particles form biaxial and splay nematic phases with randomly distributed splay domains as well as hexagonal cylindrical phases, while moderately anisotropic particles favor gyroid phases. This framework provides valuable insights for designing mesophases in supramolecular chemistry, liquid crystals, colloid science, and nanoparticle assembly.

Non-homogeneous complex fluids for conformance control and displacement: A transformative enhanced oil recovery technology.

Comb-branched poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) grafted from polysaccharide (amylose) main chains (Am-g-PN) with molar ratios nNIPAm/nAGU ranging from 5 to 21 were successfully prepared from enzymatically synthesized linear amylose with a molar mass of 50 kg mol-1. All four Am-g-PN samples were completely soluble in water at low temperatures. The dimensional and hydrodynamic properties, as determined by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), static light scattering (SLS), and dynamic light scattering (DLS), were consistent with a comblike branched architecture. The aqueous solutions became turbid with increasing temperature, similar to the behavior observed in linear PNIPAm, while the phase separation temperature increased with a higher molar ratio of glucose units due to the hydrophilic nature of the amylose main chain. Notably, almost no thermal hysteresis was observed during the heating and cooling processes. Following both constant-rate and rapid heating processes at 50 (or 60) °C, SAXS measurements revealed the formation of relatively narrowly dispersed nanoparticles with a mean radius of 50-200 nm, whereas such narrowly dispersed particles were not observed for linear PNIPAm. These findings emphasize the critical role of the comb-branched architecture in regulating thermoresponsive phase behavior and nanoparticle formation while offering new insights into the colloid and interface science of stimuli-responsive polymers.

Tailorable and biocompatible collagen-based peptides as distinctive surfactants with micellar self-assembly.

Artificial intelligence in colloid and interface science: Current research, challenges and future directions

Voltage-controlled ion structuring at ionic liquid (IL)-electrode interfaces critically affects the performance of electrochemical devices. Yet, the existing understanding of how molecular scale interactions correlate quantitatively with interfacial nanostructures remains poor. We hypothesize that introducing a novel quantitative descriptor, explicitly linking nanoscale ionic layering and molecular interactions, will enable precision tuning of interfacial properties, significantly advancing colloidal and interfacial science and engineering for energy storage technologies. We systematically characterized molecular interactions and interfacial structuring of the thin-layered phosphonium-based ionic liquid, [P6,6,6,14] [MEEA] (P6M) at a gold electrode under methodically varied voltages (-4 to +4 V). The combination of gold colloid-probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) with quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) enables accurate, quantitative mapping of IL-Au interactions. CP-AFM provided spatially resolved force mapping and local mechanical characterization under applied voltages, which we integrate with QCM observables into a new parameter, the Electro-Mechanical Structuring Factor (EMSF). Application of external voltages induced significant, measurable structural reorganization of ionic layers, resulting in increased stiffness, reduced thickness, and enhanced nanoscale ordering driven by electrostatic interactions. Our novel EMSF parameter provides explicit numeric correlations between molecular interactions and nanoscale structuring, directly addressing a critical gap in past literature, which has largely relied on qualitative/semiquantitative approaches. The EMSF parameter represents an essential advance in interfacial characterization, offering a powerful predictive tool for rationally optimizing IL-based colloidal and interfacial systems for targeted electrochemical applications.

Abstract A detailed morphological analysis of colloidal particles from micrographs is a process that necessitates the identification and measurement of numerous features. The automation of image processing while maintaining a high level of accuracy is imperative for the advancement of colloid and materials science. Automated workflows should enable the analysis of large datasets, thereby enhancing the statistical significance and reliability of particle characterization. Pattern recognition and image segmentation are key in isolating features within micrographs, thereby enabling their subsequent classification. The process of semantic segmentation organizes pixel regions into meaningful classes, thereby distinguishing particles from the background and enabling the differentiation between different types of particles. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly through machine learning (ML), neural networks (NN), and deep learning (DL) is currently changing the field of microscopy analysis and enhances analytical capabilities in image analysis. This is accomplished by enabling adaptive and accurate decision-making during data processing. The Segment Anything Model (SAM) from MetaAI allows one to study large collections of nanoparticles without additional manual labor. This allows for rapid processing and analysis. Regarding complex particles composed of individual domains, the SAM model automates the segmentation of nanoparticles into distinct groups, enabling the identification of specific particle types. In the course of this development, it is to be expected that the analysis of colloidal particles is becoming more precise, efficient, and robust. This, in turn, is expected to stimulate innovation in diverse areas, including microscopy, colloid science, materials research, and other related disciplines. Graphical abstract

ConspectusEmulsions formed by dispersing one liquid into another immiscible liquid have been a cornerstone of colloid science for over a century. Conventional emulsions are stabilized by surfactants, which reduce interfacial tension from the range of 30-50 mN/m to 1-10 mN/m, allowing droplets to persist against coalescence. Despite their broad industrial relevance, these systems are fundamentally constrained by their interfacial nature: high-energy input is required to generate small, uniform droplets; surfactants may alter physicochemical properties and introduce toxicity; and droplet morphology is largely restricted to isotropic, spherical shapes. Moreover, Ostwald ripening and droplet coalescence, driven by Laplace pressure differences, inevitably lead to thermodynamic instability. These constraints underscore the need for new emulsification paradigms beyond the classical surfactant-stabilized model.Transient emulsions are based on partially miscible liquid pairs such as water and 1-butanol. In these systems, mutual diffusion at the droplet interface generates a blurred transition miscible layer rather than a sharp phase boundary. As a consequence, interfacial tension approaches zero, fundamentally altering the behavior of emulsified droplets and imparting distinctive features: (i) ultrashort lifetime, (ii) absence of surfactants, and (iii) spontaneous emulsification under weak energy perturbation. Notably, the lack of strong interfacial constraints enables transient emulsions to undergo asymmetric deformations that are inaccessible to conventional emulsions.These unique properties open up a new frontier for dynamic, out-of-equilibrium processes, particularly in the self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles. Transient emulsions offer a versatile platform for constructing colloidal superstructures that would otherwise be unattainable. Three key advances have been demonstrated: (1) rapid, surfactant-free assembly, enabling plasmonic superstructures to form within seconds; (2) uniform superstructuring across multiple scales, achieved through template-confined emulsification; and (3) asymmetric superstructuring, facilitated by new hollowing mechanisms in transient aerosol emulsions. Together, these advances establish transient emulsions as a unique vehicle for controlling structure, symmetry, and dynamics in colloidal assemblies.Beyond fundamental insights, transient emulsions have enabled the development of superstructures with new functionalities and applications. Gold microsphere arrays fabricated by emulsion-directed assembly combined with nanosecond laser irradiation enable ultrastable anisotropic conductive bonding, offering a compelling alternative to conventional metal-polymer core-shell microspheres for anisotropic conductive films in micro-LED packaging. Silica-based hemispherical superstructures function as detachable microlenses with tunable magnification, enhancing numerical aperture and photon throughput in optical microscopy. Meanwhile, coatings assembled from concave-convex silica superstructures exhibit exceptional optical diffusion, combining low haze with high brightness for next-generation display and photonic technologies.In short, transient emulsions introduce a new paradigm in colloid and interface science. By removing the constraints of interfacial tension, they open up powerful pathways for dynamic colloidal self-assembly and functional material creation. Going forward, diversifying transient emulsion systems, enhancing structural stability, and developing high-resolution emulsion printing methods could further establish this versatile, efficient, and adaptable platform for engineering complex superstructures, connecting fundamental colloid science with advanced photonic and electronic technologies.

Hydrodynamics provides a continuum-level description of fluid motion, but its applicability at the nanoscale becomes uncertain due to the emerging importance of molecular-level effects such as spatial heterogeneity. Hydrodynamic boundary conditions that incorporate molecular details allow us to partition the system into a near-wall region and a bulk fluid region. We identify a hydrodynamic wall located inside the fluid that determines where slip begins. By extending the hydrodynamic wall with the slip length, the position of the extrapolated wall is established. This offers a unified description of both slip and stagnant flow behaviors, with wall hydrophobicity characterized by the relative location of the extrapolated wall with respect to the physical wall. Employing this concept in analyses of equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) and non-equilibrium MD simulations of Couette and Poiseuille flows, our results demonstrate consistency between equilibrium and non-equilibrium approaches across different flow types and confinement levels. This demonstrates the robust nature of linear response theory. We then explore the effects of fluid-wall and bulk fluid interactions on the hydrodynamic properties. These findings enhance the effectiveness of molecular-based simulations for investigating complex confined systems in nanofluidics, biology, and colloidal science, offering a complementary molecular-scale perspective to traditional continuum approaches.

In-depth review of colloidal and interfacial fundamentals in fracturing development of deep coal seam methane.

Innovations in the meat colloid science: Exploring the future of meat from the perspectives of sustainability, health, and personalization.

Bubble formation and interface dynamics in oil-water systems: From gas-liquid-liquid interactions to CO2-assisted recovery.