Soft matter is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary research field covering a range of subject areas including physics,
chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering. Some of the important universal features of these materials are their
mesoscopic structures and their dynamics. Due to the existence of such large-scale structures, which nevertheless exhibit
interactions of the order of the thermal energy, soft matter can readily be taken out of equilibrium by imposing a weak
external field such as an electric field, a mechanical stress or a shear flow. The importance of the coexistence of
microscopic molecular dynamics and the mesoscopic/macroscopic structures and flows requires us to develop hierarchical
approaches to understand the nonlinear and nonequilibrium phenomena, which is one of the central issues of current soft
matter research.
This special section presents selected contributions from the 'International Symposium on Non-Equilibrium Soft Matter
2010' held from 17–20 August 2010 in Nara, Japan, which aimed to describe recent advances in soft matter research
focusing especially on its nonequilibrium aspects. The topics discussed cover statics and dynamics of a wide variety of
materials ranging from traditional soft matter like polymers, gels, emulsions, liquid crystals and colloids to
biomaterials such as biopolymers and biomembranes. Among these studies, we highlighted the physics of biomembranes and
vesicles, which has attracted great attention during the last decade; we organized a special session for this active
field. The work presented in this issue deals with (1) structure formation in biomembranes and vesicles, (2) rheology
of polymers and gels, (3) mesophases in block copolymers, (4) mesoscopic structures in liquid crystals and ionic liquids,
and (5) nonequilibrium dynamics.
This symposium was organized as part of a research project supported by the Grant-in-Aid for the priority area 'Soft
Matter Physics' (2006–2010) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.
We thank those who contributed to this symposium as well as members of the 'Soft Matter Physics' project for their
valuable discussions and collaborations.
Non-equilibrium soft matter contents
Insights on raft behavior from minimal phenomenological modelsG Garbès Putzel and M Schick
Dynamical membrane curvature instability controlled by intermonolayer friction Anne-Florence Bitbol, Jean-Baptiste Fournier, Miglena I Angelova and Nicolas Puff
Numerical investigations of the dynamics of two-component vesicles Takashi Taniguchi, Miho Yanagisawa and Masayuki Imai
Asymmetric distribution of cone-shaped lipids in a highly curved bilayer revealed by a small angle neutron scattering technique Y Sakuma, N Urakami, T Taniguchi and M Imai
Hydration, phase separation and nonlinear rheology of temperature-sensitive water-soluble polymers Fumihiko Tanaka, Tsuyoshi Koga, Isamu Kaneda and Françoise M Winnik
Morphology and rheology of an immiscible polymer blend subjected to a step electric field under shear flow H Orihara, Y Nishimoto, K Aida, Y H Na, T Nagaya and S Ujiie
Surfactant-induced friction reduction for hydrogels in the boundary lubrication regime Kosuke Kamada, Hidemitsu Furukawa, Takayuki Kurokawa, Tomohiro Tada, Taiki Tominaga, Yukihiro Nakano and Jian Ping Gong
Fabrication and structural analysis of polyrotaxane fibers and films Yasuhiro Sakai, Kentaro Ueda, Naoya Katsuyama, Koji Shimizu, Shunya Sato, Jun Kuroiwa, Jun Araki, Akira Teramoto, Koji Abe, Hideaki Yokoyama and Kohzo Ito
Micellization kinetics of diblock copolymers in a homopolymer matrix: a self-consistent field study Raghuram Thiagarajan and David C Morse
Hierarchical self-assembly of two-length-scale multiblock copolymers Gerrit ten Brinke, Katja Loos, Ivana Vukovic and Gerrit Gobius du Sart
Kaleidoscopic morphologies from ABC star-shaped terpolymers Yushu Matsushita, Kenichi Hayashida, Tomonari Dotera and Atsushi Takano
Direct and inverted nematic dispersions for soft matter photonics I Muševič, M Škarabot and M Humar
Solvation effects in phase transitions in soft matter Akira Onuki, Takeaki Araki and Ryuichi Okamoto
Non-equilibrium dynamics of 2D liquid crystals driven by transmembrane gas flow Kazuyoshi Seki, Ken Ueda, Yu-ichi Okumura and Yuka Tabe
Roles of bond orientational ordering in glass transition and crystallization Hajime Tanaka
Shear banding in thixotropic and normal emulsions José Paredes, Noushine Shahidzadeh-Bonn and Daniel Bonn
Effects of hydrodynamic interactions in binary colloidal mixtures driven oppositely by oscillatory external fields Adam Wysocki and Hartmut Löwen
Onsager's variational principle in soft matter Masao Doi