TY - JOUR
T1 - How faceted liquid droplets grow tails
AU - Guttman, Shani
AU - Sapir, Zvi
AU - Schultz, Moty
AU - Butenko, Alexander V.
AU - Ocko, Benjamin M.
AU - Deutsch, Moshe
AU - Sloutskin, Eli
PY - 2016/1/19
Y1 - 2016/1/19
N2 - Liquid droplets, widely encountered in everyday life, have no flat facets. Here we show that water-dispersed oil droplets can be reversibly temperature-tuned to icosahedral and other faceted shapes, hitherto unreported for liquid droplets. These shape changes are shown to originate in the interplay between interfacial tension and the elasticity of the droplet's 2-nm-thick interfacial monolayer, which crystallizes at some T = Ts above the oil's melting point, with the droplet's bulk remaining liquid. Strikingly, at still-lower temperatures, this interfacial freezing (IF) effect also causes droplets to deform, split, and grow tails. Our findings provide deep insights into molecular-scale elasticity and allow formation of emulsions of tunable stability for directed self-assembly of complex-shaped particles and other future technologies.
AB - Liquid droplets, widely encountered in everyday life, have no flat facets. Here we show that water-dispersed oil droplets can be reversibly temperature-tuned to icosahedral and other faceted shapes, hitherto unreported for liquid droplets. These shape changes are shown to originate in the interplay between interfacial tension and the elasticity of the droplet's 2-nm-thick interfacial monolayer, which crystallizes at some T = Ts above the oil's melting point, with the droplet's bulk remaining liquid. Strikingly, at still-lower temperatures, this interfacial freezing (IF) effect also causes droplets to deform, split, and grow tails. Our findings provide deep insights into molecular-scale elasticity and allow formation of emulsions of tunable stability for directed self-assembly of complex-shaped particles and other future technologies.
KW - Emulsions
KW - Membranes' buckling
KW - Spontaneous emulsification
KW - Topological defects
KW - Two-dimensional crystals
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84955098150&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1515614113
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1515614113
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C2 - 26733673
AN - SCOPUS:84955098150
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 113
SP - 493
EP - 496
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 3
ER -