Dynamics in highly overpacked states of soft microgel particles

The aim of the present proposal is to investigate the dynamics of a thermo- and pH-sensitive colloidal microgel across the glass and jamming transitions as a function of temperature and concentration. To this purpose, we would like to enlarge the time and length scales probed by Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) using X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS). A peculiarity of microgel particles is their softness, namely the ability to deform and compress, adjusting both shape and volume, in contrast to hard spheres. By controlling the peculiar particle softness of a microgel, we would like to explore the dynamics of overpacked states that encompass glassy and jamming dynamics to highly compressed states with an effective volume fraction much larger than one. This will allow to assess the importance of the impact of softness on the state diagram of colloidal suspensions and to advance in the general challenging problem of the understanding of amorphous solids.