Co-organized with the support of CECAM

Registration and Participation:

Applications are collected at the external website: Google Forms

Please mind the deadline: May 8, 2025

Collected applications will be subjected to a selection process. Just applying does not guarantee a spot due to the limited capacity of the venue.

Motivation

Charged soft matter entails a broad variety of systems, sharing one common feature: they contain charged macromolecules or colloidal particles, typically few nanometers in size, accompanied by salt ions and other charged small molecules, and polar solvents. The relevant systems range from cellular membraneless organelles to protein solutions, bio-inspired or synthetic polymers, inverse patchy colloids or polymer-electrolytes found in modern battery systems. Although very different in nature, these systems share the same physics, predominantly controlled by interplay of electrostatic interactions and thermal fluctuations.

Unfortunately, most of the research in the field of charged soft matter is carried out in communities centered mainly around the target systems named above, allowing only limited exchange across these communities. This leads not only to differences in nomenclatures and concepts, but also to reinventions and rediscoveries of phenomena.

The aim of this workshop is to provide an interdisciplinary platform for scientific exchange between these different communities investigating charged soft matter, underlining the shared aspects of the involved physics.

Systems of interest:

C1: charged colloids, proteins and viruses

C2: polyelectrolytes and polypeptides

C3: intrinsically disordered proteins

Phenomena of interest:

P1: Liquid-liquid phase separation and coacervation

P2: Self-assembly, structure formation, supramolecular phenomena

P3: Dynamics, rheology, charge transport and non-equilibrium phenomena

P4: Structure and function of soft matter in nature and technology

P5: Interactions, charge regulation, responsive and programmable matter