Spatial heterogeneities in soft thermosensitive suspensions when approaching the glass transition

Dense colloidal suspensions are an ideal model system to study the glass
transition. With increasing volume fraction, the suspension dynamics
experiences a slowing down of several orders of magnitude, as well as a
change of qualitative behavior, from viscous to elastic, at reasonable
experimental time scales, and with no signi?cant structural changes. I will
present recent results about aging and dynamic heterogeneities in
thermosensitive suspensions of pNIPAm microgels. The particles radius in the
suspension, and therefore their volume fraction, can be reversibly tuned
with temperature, which provides a unique way to explore the phase behavior
on the same sample.