Smart, Living & Active Matter - Leiden

Leiden Institute of Physics

About us

The SLAM - Smart, Living, & Active Matter - initiative unites theory and experimental groups of the Leiden Institute of Physics. It currently gathers the groups of Luca Giomi, Louise Jawerth, Daniela Kraft, Martin van Hecke, Silke Henkes and Alexandre Morin.

SLAM symposium on Active Solids

The SLAM symposium on Active Solids which took place on June 4th was a succes!

Coming up next

2025-08-19 - 10:00 @ BW 0.06 (New Gorlaeus)

Master Defense Martin Bijl (Alexandre’s student)

Title: "Impact of liquid metal droplets" Abstract: Liquid droplets are of interest in many fields of science and engineering. One particular interest is the maximum deformation of the droplet when impacting a surface. The deformation depends on the viscosity, surface tension, density, diameter, and velocity of the droplet. The maximum de formation have been investigated before for different materials, including water, blood, and glycerol. Furthermore, a recent computer model found the maximum deformation for a wide range of material properties, velocities, and diameters. We found the maximum deformation of high surface tension Galinstan droplet impacts. The droplets were accelerated using charge contact electrophoresis. We found that the predictions by the theory were mostly accurate. In addition, we found that conversely the theory is potentially useful in finding the surface tension of a material. Moreover, our results add to an increasing number of droplet deformation experiments.