The Janus fluid. A theoretical perspective (Q380946)

The new brief book reviews the present advances in the theory of Janus fluids. Janus fluids are fluids made of Janus particles immersed in a solvent. And ``Janus particles can be viewed as one type of fundamental colloidal molecules, whose molecular counterpart can be surfactant or dipolar molecules'' (preface). The book is composed of two chapters. In the first chapter, the classical statistics problem of the Janus fluid is considered discussing general properties of the fluids as the phase diagrams, their structure and their clustering. The state-of-the-art in the theoretical treatment of the fluid is given with a bridge between new research results published in journal articles and a contextual literature review. Some details about the Monte-Carlo-Metropolis algorithm see [\textit{N. Metropolis} et al., ``Equation of state calculations for fast computing machines'', J.\ Chem.\ Phys.\ 21, No. 6, 1087--1092 (1953)] used to study the presented fluid. Only few details of the integral equation theories and the thermodynamic perturbation theories are given, as a full account of these topics is presented in the work by \textit{J. P. Hansen} and \textit{I. R. McDonald} [Theory of simple liquids. London etc.: Academic Press (1990; Zbl 0756.00004)]. The second chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of the clustering and self-assembly occurring in Janus fluids. Inter-cluster and intra-cluster configurational partition functions of Janus fluids are presented. Chapter 2 closely follows the results of two former reviews of the author [\textit{R. Fantoni} et al., ``Cluster theory of Janus particles'', Soft Matter 7, No. 6, 2419--2427 (2011); \textit{R. Fantoni}, ``A cluster theory for a Janus fluid'', Eur. Phys. J. B, Condens. Matter Complex Syst. 85, No. 3, Article 108, 12 p. (2012)], where a cluster theory was constructed to describe semi-quantitatively the mizellization properties of Janus fluids. These properties of the fluids make them interesting in biological and medical physics as one could use the clustered superstructures as drug carriers in the human body. The book is written at a graduate student level of comprehension and should be of some use for the student who wishes to undergo research work in the field of soft matter and biophysics, or for the soft matter and biophysics scientist as a point of reference on the Janus fluid.