https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-02073-0
Review
Differently shaped hard body colloids in confinement: From passive to active particles
1 Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud and CNRS, 91405 Orsay, France
2 Institut für Theoretische Physik II: Weiche Materie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
3 Institut für Theoretische Physik I, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
4 ITF, Utrecht University, MG 305, Leuvenlaan 4, 3584 CE Utrecht, The Netherlands
5 SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK
Received: 6 September 2013
Revised: 17 September 2013
Published online: 25 November 2013
We review recent progress in the theoretical description of anisotropic hard colloidal particles. The shapes considered range from rods and dumbbells to rounded cubes, polyhedra to biaxial particles with arbitrary shape. Our focus is on both static and dynamical density functional theory and on computer simulations. We describe recent results for the structure, dynamics and phase behaviour in the bulk and in various confining geometries, e.g. established by two parallel walls which reduce the dimensionality of the system to two dimensions. We also include recent theoretical modelling for active particles, which are autonomously driven by some intrinsic motor, and highlight their fascinating nonequilibrium dynamics and collective behaviour.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2013
