Most of us encounter liquid foams every day : when washing the dishes or our hair, or when drinking a beer after work. But in the rush of the day only few of us take the time to admire this bubbly material, which can teach us so many lessons in fundamental physics and physico-chemistry. We shall take this time here, and look in particular at a special class of foams in which all bubbles have the same volume. How can we generate and stabilise such kind of foams? Into what kind of structures do the bubbles organise? And how can these bubbly colloids be used for the development of new materials?
Figure 1: Photograph of a monodisperse foam in which bubbles self-order under gravity into hexagonally close-packed structures showing stacking faults, dislocations and grain boundaries just like solid crystals. Courtesy A. van der Net.
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