Introduction and overview

doi:10.1093/oso/9780198505907.003.0001

Introduction and overview

2002-06-20

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DOI：10.1093/oso/9780198505907.003.0001

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Abstract Soft condensed matter (or soft matter, for brevity) is a convenient term for materials in states of matter that are neither simple liquids nor crystalline solids of the type studied in other branches of solid state physics. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life-glues, paints, and soaps, for example-while others are important in industrial processes, such as the polymer melts that are moulded and extruded to form plastics. Much of the food we eat can be classed as soft matter, and indeed the stuff of life itself shares the qualities of mutability and responsiveness to its surroundings that are characteristic of soft matter. We are ourselves soft machines, in William Burroughs’ apt phrase, and the material we are made of is soft matter. In more precise terms, the materials we are discussing include colloidal dispersions, where submicrometre particles of solid or liquid are dispersed in another liquid, polymer melts or solutions in which the size and connectivity of the molecules lead to striking new properties, such as viscoelasticity, which are very different to those of a simple liquid, and liquid crystals, where an anisotropic molecular shape leads to states with a degree of ordering intermediate between a crystalline solid and a liquid.

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