Precise Self-Positioning
of Colloidal Particles on
Liquid Emulsion Droplets
Posted on 2019-09-25 - 15:47
Decorating
emulsion droplets by particles stabilizes foodstuff
and pharmaceuticals. Interfacial particles also influence aerosol
formation, thus impacting atmospheric CO2 exchange. While
studies of particles at disordered droplet interfaces abound in the
literature, such studies for ubiquitous ordered interfaces are not
available. Here, we report such an experimental study, showing that
particles residing at crystalline interfaces of liquid droplets spontaneously
self-position to specific surface locations, identified as structural
topological defects in the crystalline surface monolayer. This monolayer
forms at temperature T = Ts, leaving the droplet liquid and driving at Td < Ts a spontaneous shape-change
transition of the droplet from spherical to icosahedral. The particle’s
surface position remains unchanged in the transition, demonstrating
these positions to coincide with the vertices of the sphere-inscribed
icosahedron. Upon further cooling, droplet shape-changes to other
polyhedra occur, with the particles remaining invariably at the polyhedra’s
vertices. At still lower temperatures, the particles are spontaneously
expelled from the droplets. Our results probe the molecular-scale
elasticity of quasi-two-dimensional curved crystals, impacting also
other fields, such as protein positioning on cell membranes, controlling
essential biological functions. Using ligand-decorated particles,
and the precise temperature-tunable surface position control found
here, may also allow using these droplets for directed supra-droplet
self-assembly into larger structures, with a possible post-assembly
structure fixation by UV polymerization of the droplet’s liquid.
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Liber, Shir R.; Butenko, Alexander V.; Caspi, Moshe; Guttman, Shani; Schultz, Moty; Schofield, Andrew B.; et al. (2019). Precise Self-Positioning
of Colloidal Particles on
Liquid Emulsion Droplets. ACS Publications. Collection. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b01833