ABSTRACT
The colloidal domain comprises a wide variety of curved interfaces. For instance, in biotechnological and biomedical systems we encounter foams, emulsions, and other dispersions of (deformable) mesoscopic particles such as vesicles, liposomes, and various biological cells. Furthermore, there are numerous physical phenomena where curved interfaces play a crucial role. Capillary rise and capillary depression, illustrated in Figure 6.1, are well-known examples. If the inside of a capillary is wetted by the liquid capillary rise is observed whereas nonwetting results in capillary depression. The angle α between the liquid and the solid, the so-called contact angle, is a measure of the wettability of the solid: the
better the wetting, the sharper the contact angle. Wetting phenomena are treated in detail in Chapter 8.
