Despite the relevance to environmental, biological and industrial processes, the motion of a colloidal particle close to a fluid interface and the way it interacts with the water surface are still largely elusive and intriguing physical phenomena.We explored the system of individual colloidal particles close to an air-water interface by recording highly resolved 3D trajectories through a dual wave reflection interference setup (DW-RIM). Contrary to other established experimental techniques, DW-RIM allows accurate measurements of the absolute particle-interface distance and thus does not require any calibration or assumption to know the location of the interface. The particle-interface system shows two different potential energy landscapes resulting to two different equilibrium particle-interface distances. The larger one can be fairly explained by Van der Waals and electrostatic interactions combined with gravity. The shorter one highlights the existence of an unexpected additional attractive interaction. Surface heterogeneities as possible origin of such an interaction are considered and discussed.Concerning the friction the particle undergoes, the air-water interface peculiarly acts as a slip boundary for the particle motion parallel to the interface and as a no-slip boundary for the perpendicular motion. This experimental result is rationalized considering recent models based on surface incompressibility.

To date, aqueous stable graphene flakes solutionscan be obtained by simple REDOX reactions.1–5 Most of the current applications regardinggraphene require ordered nanostructuredcomposites materials. Liquid crystal phases orderingrepresent an opportunity to arrange theminto macroscopic assemblies with long-rangeordering. 1,2 Preparing organized materials andthin films from these dispersions then requires agood control of the liquid crystal ordering duringthe deposition and the drying of the films. As amatter of fact, it turns out that graphene flakeseasily align at high shear.3,4 On the other hand,Graphene Flakes Liquid Crystals (GFLC) exhibita very interesting behaviour at low shear or undersmall displacements, thin films often showspeculiar patterns (such as the periodic texturesshown in Fig.72-72). We have shown how tocreate and stabilize large-sized periodic texturesin GFLC. The patterns have been characterizedunder optical and electronic microscopies. Theirstability can be explained by the competition betweenthe anchoring field of the substrate andthe presence of a yield stress resulting fromthe peculiar elastic and rheological properties ofthe GFLC. Our findings also clarify why longstandinghypotheses on the presence of exoticphases1 at large concentrations are present inthe literature.
References[1] Zakri, C.; Blanc, C.; Grelet, E.; Zamora-Ledezma, C.; Puech, N.; Anglaret, E.; Poulin, P. Philosophical Transactions of theRoyal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 2013, 371, 20120499..
[2] Zamora-Ledezma, C.; Puech, N.; Zakri, C.; Grelet, E.; Moulton, S. E.; Wallace, G. G.; Gambhir, S.; Blanc, C.; Anglaret, E.;Poulin, P. The journal of physical chemistry letters 2012, 3, 2425–2430..
[3] Poulin, P.; Jalili, R.; Neri, W.; Nallet, F.; Divoux, T.; Colin, A.; Aboutalebi, S. H.; Wallace, G.; Zakri, C. Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences 2016, 113, 11088–11093..
[4] Zamora-Ledezma, C.; Jeridi, H.; Anglaret, E.; Blanc, C. Orientations and periodic textures in graphene liquid crystals. 27thInternational Liquid Crystal Conference (ILCC2018). 2018..
[5] Xu, Z.; Gao, C. Nature communications 2011, 2, 571.

Heliconal nematic twist bend (NTB) phases are usually not well oriented in planar commercial cells, even in thin (~1 µm) ones where a micron-sized periodic texture is usually observed [1,2,3] (see Fig.1-a). The origin of the stripe patterns is attributed to the rapid shrinking of the pseudo-layers below the N-NTB phase transition temperature, which yields an undulation instability. The observed periodicity is found to be twice the cell gap [1].
We have explored the effect of the strength of the anchorings of the substrates on the resulting patterns. We used polymer aligning layers of tunable azimuthal and zenithal strengths to design liquid crystal cells with surface anchorings ranging from ultraweak to strong. We then have studied the patterns formed by the NTB phase of 1,7-bis-4-(4-cyanobiphenyl) heptane (CB7CB). We will show how the period of the stripes can be varied in a large range in cells of the same thickness but with different anchoring preparations. With adequate anchoring conditions (see Fig.1-b-c), an excellent and spontaneous planar alignment of the NTB phase of CB7CB can be obtained much below the phase transition temperature.
[1] Panov V.P. et al; Spontaneous Periodic Deformations in Nonchiral Planar-Aligned Bimesogenswith a Nematic-Nematic Transition and a Negative Elastic Constant; Phys. Rev. Lett. ; 105; 167801; 2010.
[2] Challa P. K. et al; Twist-bend nematic liquid crystals in high magnetic fields; Phys. Rev. E: Stat., Nonlinear, Soft Matter Phys.; 89; 060501; 2014.
[3] Vaupotič N. et al.; Polarization Gratings Spontaneously Formed from a Helical Twist‐Bend Nematic Phase; Chem. Phys. Chem.; 19; 2566; 2018.

Heliconal nematic twist bend (NTB) phases are frequently found at high temperatures. In the last years the search of stable room-temperatures NTB phases has led to the synthesis of new compounds [1] and to the design of multicomponent systems. Mixtures of NTB compounds with nematogens ,such as 4-Cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) dimeric liquid crystal 1,7-bis(4-cyanobiphenyl-4-yl) heptane (CB7CB) decrease strongly the temperature range of the NTB phase and tune the optical, thermal and dielectric properties of NTB [2]. In this work we have explored the physical properties of mixtures of CB7CB with several smectogens with a particular focus on 4′-octyl-4-biphenylcarbonitrile (8CB). The 8CB/CB7CB phase diagram reveals striking features compared to the 5CB/CB7CB one. Despite their macroscopic resemblance, SmA and NTB domains appear incompatible and remain separated by a nematic phase that extends to very low temperature (-20°C) at a CB7CB fraction of ϕ_c≈20%. We have characterized the optical, thermal, dielectric and anchoring properties of the N and NTB phases of the mixtures. Compared to the pure CB7CB system, the N phase shows unusual behavior over a large range of composition and reveals strong pre-transitional effects when approaching ϕ_c. We also found that, for specific aligning substrates, adding 8CB to CB7CB drastically changes the anchoring properties (fig1) facilitating homeotropic alignment.
[1] Yuan Wang, Quan Li; Room temperature heliconical twist-bend nematic liquid crystal; Cryst. Eng. Comm; 17; 2778-2782; 2015.
[2] Nina Trbojevic and Mamatha Nagaraj; Dielectric properties of liquid crystalline dimer mixtures exhibiting the nematic and twist-bend nematic phases; Phys. Rev. E ;96; 052703; 2017.

Challenges of public health and sustainable development require replacing in food products animal proteins by plant proteins. In this optics, it is crucial to understand the structure and kinetic of formation of a film of plant proteins in order to improve the control of emulsions and foams stabilized by these proteins.In this talk we will present experimental results on the behaviour interfacial properties of wheat gluten, sunflower and rapeseed proteins at liquid interfaces. Thanks to a combination of tensiometry, dilatational rheology and ellipsometry, rational physical pictures of the dynamics of the interfacial properties are achieved, for the various proteins and at both air/water and oil/water interfaces. For gluten proteins, a time-concentration superposition of the data is evidenced whatever the subphase concentration, which reveals that the kinetics of protein adsorption at the interface is dominated by bulk diffusion. We propose a consistent physical picture of the multistep diffusion-controlled irreversible adsorption of the gliadin proteins at an air/water interface, and evidence surface-induced conformational changes of the proteins followed by film gelation [1]. Sunflower and rapeseed proteins by contrast do not reorganize once adsorbed at an interface and display a simpler dynamics of film formation. In addition the failure at high concentration of the time-concentration superposition of the tensiometry and viscoelastic data strongly suggest a surface-induced aggregation process, which we confirm with turbidity measurements. By quantitatively comparing the surface pressure dependence viscoelasticity of the various interfaces, we hightlight the crucial role on the behavior of plant proteins at liquid interfaces of the solvent quality and of the protein softness, that is discussed in regard to the protein structure.