Topic summary

Entropic forces

Entropic forces

Extracted from the Wikipedia article Entropic force.

Colloids

Entropic forces are important and widespread in the physics of colloids, where they are responsible for the depletion force, and the ordering of hard particles, such as the crystallization of hard spheres, the isotropic-nematic transition in liquid crystal phases of hard rods, and the ordering of hard polyhedra. Because of this, entropic forces can be an important driver of self-assembly