Stephan Herminghaus What General Principles Govern the Behavior of Liquids in Porous Materials?

Stefan Herminghaus is Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen (Germany) and is the head of the department ’Dynamics of Complex Fluids’. He is also Honorary Professor of Physics at the University of Göttingen. In his research Herminghaus concentrates on complex fluids, non-equilibrium systems and irreversibility. Within his field of research he examines the behavior and consistance of liquids of different materials. He received an IBM Fellowship and was a Heisenberg Fellow. He is a Member of the German Physical Society and the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers.

Area of Research

Dynamics of Complex Fluids, Granular Matter

Stephan Herminghaus. "Roughness-Induced Non-Wetting." Europhysics Letters 52 (2000): 165-170.  
Stephan Herminghaus. "Universal Phase Diagram for Wetting on Mesoscale Roughness." Physical Review Letters 109 (2012): No. 236102.  
Shashi Thutupalli, Ralf Seemann and Stephan Herminghaus. "Swarming Behavior of Simple Model Squirmers." New Journal of Physics 13 (2011): No. 073021.  
Mario Scheel, Ralf Seemann, Martin Brinkmann, Marco Di Michiel, Boris Breidenbach and Stephan Herminghaus. "Morphological Clues to Wet Granular Pile Stability." Nature Materials 7 (2008): 189-193.  
Shashi Thutupalli, Stephan Herminghaus and Ralf Seemann. "Bilayer Membranes in Micro-Fluidics: From Gel Emulsions to Soft Functional Devices." Soft Matter 7 (2010): 1312-1320.  

since 2005

Professor of Physics

University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

since 2003

Managing Director

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

since 2003

Head of the Department for Dynamics of Complex Fluids

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

2013

Professeur invité

Université Paris-Sud, Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (Orsay)

2006-2007

Professeur invité

Université Paris VI, Institut Curie

1999-2003

Professor

University of Ulm (Universität Ulm)

Head of Department of Applied Physics

1996-1999

Head of an Independent Research Group

Max Planck Institute of Colloid and Interfaces

1991-1995

Research Fellow

University of Konstanz (Universität Konstanz)

1990

Postdoctoral Researcher

IBM Almaden Research Center, San José, California (USA)

1989

Guest Researcher

University of Konstanz (Universität Konstanz)

1989

Researcher

Schott Company, Mainz

1994

Habilitation

University of Konstanz (Universität Konstanz)

Faculty of Physics

1989

PhD in Physics

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

1985

Diploma in Physics

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

Fellowships

- Heisenberg-Stipendium of the German Science Foundation (DFG) for a Project on Nano-Fluidics

© Maximilian Dörrbecker

Max Planck Society


"The Max Planck Society is Germany's most successful research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, no fewer than 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, putting it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 15,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are proof of the outstanding research work conducted at Max Planck Institutes – and many of those articles are among the most-cited publications in the relevant field." (Source)

Institute

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

"The Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) belongs to the Max Planck Society. Its research focus is in physics, with strong interdisciplinary aspects. It emerged in 2004 from the Max Planck Institute for Fluid Dynamics. In 2011 it moved from the Bunsenstrasse in Göttingen to the Max Planck Campus at Fassberg, located between the main town of Göttingen and its suburb Nikolausberg. The MPIDS is now right next to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, with which it already had and continues to have cooperations in interdisciplinary areas between physics, biology and medicine. There is also a close connection with the Faculty of Physics at the University of Göttingen.

The MPIDS consists of three departments. Besides that, there are presently three independent Max Planck Research Groups at the institute." (Source)

Map

Understanding the behavior of liquids in porous materials is important for very different areas of our lives, ranging from the recovery of oil from rock to water holding capacities of different soils. The study presented in this video is dedicated to the quest for the mechanisms behind these processes. STEPHAN HERMINGHAUS explains that, starting out, the researchers had several ideas for what the general principle might be. They used modern techniques and 3D computer simulations to single out the right candidate. But only the rediscovery and adaption of an old two-dimensional simulation lead to the breakthrough in finding the actual mechanism.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10246

The Role of Local Instabilities in Fluid Invasion into Permeable Media

  • Kamaljit Singh, Hagen Scholl, Martin Brinkmann, Marco Di Michiel, Mario Scheel, Stephan Herminghaus and Ralf Seemann
  • Scientific Reports
  • Published in 2017
Kamaljit Singh, Hagen Scholl, Martin Brinkmann, Marco Di Michiel, Mario Scheel, Stephan Herminghaus and Ralf Seemann. "The Role of Local Instabilities in Fluid Invasion into Permeable Media." Scientific Reports 7 (2017).