Prelude

Study of colloids and interfaces is highly multidisciplinary in nature combining both the concepts and applications from such diverse domains as chemical engineering and manufacturing, analytical and physical chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, environmental science, materials science including biomaterials and advanced materials, petroleum engineering and finally, nanotechnology! The word ‘colloid’ refers to particles in micron to sub-micron ranges where surface properties and interactions (rather than the bulk properties) become increasingly important with declining size or separation distance. In contrast to the ‘bulk’ systems, the properties and behavior of colloidal systems depends strongly on the system SIZE and inter-particle distances. Thus, understanding of colloids and interfaces is central to even such classical phenomena and applications such as (to name very few): adhesion, particle-aggregation, wetting, detergency, oil-recovery, flotation, nucleation, bio-surfaces, chromatography, paints, composite materials; foams, emulsions, aerosols and other colloidal dispersions.
This course will aim at introducing the basic concepts and tools for the analysis of colloidal and interfacial properties, behavior and interactions together with brief introduction to some advanced topics, etc. which have attracted increasing attention recently. The overall aim of this course is to develop a broad background in colloids and interfaces which will enable students to: (a) appreciate and understand much of the otherwise specialized contemporary published research, and (b) apply these themes to their own research problems effectively.

Prerequisites
Introductory courses (one basic course) in Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics.

Acknowledgements

Ashutosh Sharma is indebted to his teachers at SUNY Buffalo—Profs. Eli Ruckenstein, Robert Good and Carel J. van Oss-- who introduced him to the fascinating world of surfaces. He also gratefully acknowledges several generation of students at IIT Kanpur who by their questioning and research taught him many things about colloids and interfaces. These include the students of a course on colloids and surfaces (ChE 688) and many PhD students who have worked with him in the area including: Ahmad Jameel, Subir Bhattacharjee, Rajesh Khanna, Pavitra Shandilya, Kajari Kargupta, Venkata Satyanarayana, Jayati Sarkar, Vivekanand Gaur, Ruhi Verma, Manoj Gonuguntala, Rabibrata Mukherjee, Gaurav Tomar, Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Majumder, Chandra Shekhar Sharma, Ankur Verma, Bahni Ray, Dinesh Reddy, Sandeep Patil, Asima Shaukat, Amritha Rammohan, Priyanka Sachan, Kunal Mondal, Shilpee Jain, Shilpa, Babloo Mordina and Alok Srivastava.
Ashutosh Sharma gratefully acknowledges the able help received in compilation of lectures from the students of a course on Colloids and Interfaces (ChE 688) taught at IIT Kanpur over several years. In particular, Akshat Jain, Amit Jain, Kapil, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Mangal, N.I. Kumar, Manish produced some of the old drafts that were further modified by Abhishek Kanodia, Aditaya Sood, Ankit Mahlotra,  Ankit gargava, Ankur Gupta, Anurag Tiwari, Giri Babu, Jaishree, Jaba Mitra, Kunal Mondal, Mahim Misra, Paras Panwar, Pranav Agrawal, Sankalp Agrawal, Satya Shekhar, Souryadeep Bhattacharya, Tanmay Dhavle, Tapas Palai, Vinay Patel, and many others. Further compilations and polishing were helped by Kunal Mondal and Souryadeep Bhattacharya.