Related papers: Confined colloidal droplets dry to form circular m…
We report observations of the self-assembly of coated droplets into regular clusters at the sudden expansion of a microfluidic channel. A double emulsion consisting of a regular train of coated microdroplets was created upstream of the…
Segregation patterns of size-bidisperse particle mixtures in a fully-three-dimensional flow produced by alternately rotating a spherical tumbler about two perpendicular axes are studied over a range of particle sizes and volume ratios using…
When a drop dries, it often leaves a ring-shaped stain through a ubiquitous phenomenon known as the coffee-ring effect. This also occurs when the liquid contains suspended microbes; evaporation leaves cells at higher concentrations in the…
When drinking a cup of coffee under the morning sunshine, you may notice white membranes of steam floating on the surface of the hot water. They stay notably close to the surface and appear to almost stick to it. Although the membranes…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
Understanding the relationship between colloidal building block shape and self-assembled material structure is important for the development of novel materials by self-assembly. In this regard, colloidal superballs are unique building…
We present a confocal-microscopy study of demixing and remixing in binary liquids containing colloidal particles. First, particle-stabilized emulsions have been fabricated by nucleation and growth of droplets upon cooling from the…
Colloidal droplets are used in a variety of practical applications. Some of these applications require particles of different sizes. These include medical diagnostic methods, the creation of photonic crystals, the formation of…
We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a…
We investigate the 3D structure and drying dynamics of complex mixtures of emulsion droplets and colloidal particles, using confocal microscopy. Air invades and rapidly collapses large emulsion droplets, forcing their contents into the…
Recently, it was observed that water droplets suspended in a nematic liquid crystal form linear chains (Poulin et al., Science 275, 1770 (1997)). The chaining occurs, e.g., in a large nematic drop with homeotropic boundary conditions at all…
Recent experimental results have shown that vibro-fluidized, binary granular materials exhibit Rayleigh-Taylor-like instabilities that manifest themselves in rising plumes, rising bubbles and the sinking and splitting of granular droplets.…
The evaporation of multi-component sessile droplets is key in many physicochemical applications such as inkjet printing, spray cooling, and micro-fabrication. Past fundamental research has primarily concentrated on single drops, though in…
We simulate a strongly size-disperse hard-sphere fluid confined between two parallel, hard walls. We find that confinement induces crystallization into n-layered hexagonal lattices and a novel honeycomb-shaped structure, facilitated by…
The structural evolution of suspensions upon freezing is studied with optical microscopy in a suspended droplet configuration. Droplets have millimeter size and consist in an aqueous mixture of silica particles while the surroundings phase…
A drop of aqueous potato starch gel with a certain mole fraction of NaCl, when dried on a glass slide, exhibits strong segregation and intricate pattern formation phenomena. The salt forms radial dendritic crystalline aggregates near the…
Controlling the deposition of filaments, such as nanowires and nanotubes, from evaporating droplets is critical for the performance of emerging technologies like flexible sensors and printed electronics. The final deposit morphology…
Simulations show that when a phase-separated binary AB fluid is driven to flow past chemically patterned substrates in a microchannel, the fluid exhibits unique morphological instabilities. For the pattern studied, these instabilities give…
We present the first experimental study on the simultaneous capillary instability amongst viscous concentric rings suspended atop an immiscible medium. The rings ruptured upon annealing, with three types of phase correlation between…
Droplet evaporation has been intensively investigated in past decades owing to its emerging applications in diverse fields of science and technology. Yet the role transport mechanisms has been the subject of a heated debate, especially the…