Discontinuous thinning in active microrheology of soft complex matter.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28085442.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1103/PhysRevE.94.062610.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Employing theory and numerical simulations, we demonstrate discontinuous force thinning due to the driven motion of an external probe in a host medium. We consider two cases: an ideal structureless medium (modeling ultrasoft materials such as polymer melts) and a dilute bath of interacting repulsive particles. When the driving of the probe exceeds a critical force, the microviscosity of the medium drops abruptly by about an order of magnitude. This phenomenon occurs for strong attractive interactions between a large probe and a sufficiently dense host medium.