<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Dear Soft Matter & Complex Systems Colleagues and Friends,</font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">On Friday 12 April 2024 at 9:30 AM at the UW Faculty of Physics (Pasteura 5, Warsaw; room 1.40) we are hosting a seminar during which </font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><b>Alina Ciach </b>(Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences)</font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">will give a talk</font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><b>Self-assembly in mixtures with competing interactions</b></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><h2 style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 6px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><b><font face="HelveticaNeue" style="font-size: 12px;">Abstract</font></b></h2><div><font face="HelveticaNeue">I will present theoretical and simulation results for a mixture of oppositely charged hydrophilic and hyrophobic particles immersed in a near-critical binary solvent. In such a mixture, the potential between like particles can have the form of short-range attraction long-range repulsion, and the cross-interaction is repulsive at short- and attractive at large distances. A theory combining the density functional and field-theoretical methods and the MD simulations show coexistence of a low-density disordered phase with a high-density phase with alternating layers rich in the first and second components. In these layers, crystalline structure is present in the solid, and absent in the liquid crystals. The density and the degree of order of the ordered phase decrease with increasing temperature, up to a temperature where the theory predicts a narrow two-phase region with increasing density of both disordered and ordered phases for increasing temperature. MD simulations show that monocrystals of the solid and liquid crystals have a prolate shape with the axis parallel to the direction of concentration oscillations, and the deviation from the spherical shape increases with increasing periodic order.</font></div></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">The figure shows cross-sections of the monocrystal.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><img id="<part1.80gabFIx.X700FgMU@ippt.pan.pl>" src="cid:3205B20C-38DA-416E-928F-2F1878A24BD6" alt="image.png" class="Apple-web-attachment" style="opacity: 1;"></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">We warmly invite you to attend the talk and the Soft Matter Coffee Break after the seminar, held in room 2.63 (2nd floor).</font></div></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Maria Ekiel-Jeżewska</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Maciej Lisicki</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Piotr Szymczak</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Panagiotis Theodorakis</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Marek Trippenbach</font></div></div></div><br></div></body></html>