Both equilibrium and non-equilibrium behaviour of confined many particle systems is of great scientific interest. To investigate confined colloidal model systems we constructed a new experimental high-precision setup for microscopic applications.
The confinement consisting basically of flat quartz plates can be adjusted precisely by use of special Piezo drives allowing a variable plate separation (contact – 100µm) and the application of compression and shear forces. The experimental setup is designed for observations using common optical scientific microscopes.
