Soft condensed matter is a subfield of condensed matter physics, which involves the study of systems that are not gases, simple liquids, or crystalline solids. One characteristic is the presence of a distance of mesoscopic size, which plays a preponderant role in determining its properties. By mesoscopic size is understood a length between the molecular scale and the macroscopic scale, which without very well defined limits is approximately between 50 and 3000 nm. Another important characteristic is the self-assembly of aggregates that generally form the building blocks of these materials. Self-assembly is a dynamic process that describes how the components of a system self-organize, without external agents, in orderly structures and patterns, under conditions out of equilibrium. These structures usually present a complicated architecture, generally anisotropic and united essentially by weak interactions. In these systems, arrangements are achieved with long-range orientational order, but not positional order, and they usually present a very complicated rheological behavior. In phase transitions it is common for entropy terms to dominate the enthalpic. Fluctuations and Brownian motion are very relevant as well, such as surface tension and transport processes.
The IFUNAM studies, among other topics: the organization in the monolayers of colloidal particles trapped in the air-water interface; the microstructure of the giant tubular micelles and their rheological behavior; wetting phenomena at the solid-liquid interface and its relationship with anchor points on macro and nanoscopic scales; the origin of friction considering the electronic properties of surfaces; properties of soft active matter in the presence of external fluxes.
