PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF FLUIDS

The first part of the course will introduce concepts and methods of statistical themodinamics (distribution functions, partition functions and thermodynamic properties). These will be used to examine fluctuations on the microscopic and molecular scale, intermolecular correlations and thermodynamic properties of simple liquids.
In the second part of the course, the concepts and methods developed in the first part will be applied to topics such as:
- Colloids and dispersed/supramolecular systems: effective interactions (van der Waals and entropic forces, Poisson-Boltzmann theory, DLVO theory), tuning of attractive interactions (phase diagrams of colloids and of protein solutions).
- Polymers: conformational and elastic properties of polymers (freely-jointed and worm-like chain models) and their experimental determination (measure of shape fluctuations and stretching of single polymers); liquid-liquid phase separation (Flory-Huggins theory); coil-globule transition.
- Anisotropic systems: liquid crystals, lipid membranes.
The course includes also some mention of experimental methods for the investigation of the structure and order of fluids, in particular scattering and microscopy techniques and single molecule experiments.