Overview

Abstract

The best way to understand the guiding physical principles common to different aspects of complex materials is by covering as many examples as possible. Complex materials either refer to colloidal dispersions in the liquid state or to polymers and composites in the solid state, which give an impulse to the importance of rough surfaces and interfaces. In these materials, particles or molecules are organized into structures with the length scales between atoms and microns. They play a prominent role in so many high-technology applications. From the scientific point of view, they have been widely studied in the connection with disordered systems, mesoscopic physics, and soft condensed matter. Disorder is characteristic of complex materials, and it can be structural, compositional, or topological disorder. The physics of complex materials is a tremendously rich subject, and it is too late to capture all of the richness of their properties within a single volume. This book places its main emphasis on the nonequilibrium behavior in its relationships to disordered structures that are of great theoretical and experimental interest. A coherent physical picture is expected to emerge that shows the underlying connections and parallels between different disordered systems varying from liquid to solid, and from surface to interface. Although we shall deal mostly with theories, the essential experimental verifications of the theoretical calculations will be discussed.