Particles at Liquid Interfaces
Energy Barrier to Particle Surface Adsorption

Spaepen developed methods to grow colloidal crystals without defects by rapid centrifugation, which ensures that particles in the crystal grow deterministically. Spaepen also introduces defects into the colloidal crystal, and uses confocal microscopy to identify the position and type of these defects. These studies exploit the use of colloidal particles to investigate problems in the behavior of solids. The colloids enable the full position and dynamics of each particle to be measured.