We present a study on buckling of colloidal particles, including experimental, theoretical and numerical developments. Oil-filled thin shells prepared by emulsion templating show buckling in mixtures of water and ethanol, due to dissolution of the core in the external medium. This leads to conformations with a single depression, either axisymmetric or polygonal depending on the geometrical features of the shells. These conformations could be theoretically and/or numerically reproduced in a model of homogeneous spherical thin shells with bending and stretching elasticity, submitted to an isotropic external pressure.
@article{arxiv.0802.0824,
title = {Anisotropic colloids through non-trivial buckling},
author = {Catherine Quilliet and Carmen Zoldesi and Christophe Riera and Alfons Van Blaaderen and Arnout Imhof},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.0824},
year = {2009}
}