Abstract
This paper is associated with a video winner of a 2019 American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Milton van Dyke Award for work presented at the DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion. The original video is available online at the Gallery of Fluid Motion, https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2019.GFM.V0082.
Highlights
Thin layers of mud or paint often crack when they dry
We deposit a millimetric drop of an aqueous suspension of silica nanoparticles (Ludox AS-40, 22 nm in diameter) on a horizontal glass slide
Regularly spaced cracks propagate with avalanchelike dynamics over the deposit, creating petals of a colloidal flower
Summary
Thin layers of mud or paint often crack when they dry. a drop of a concentrated colloidal suspension left to dry will eventually end up as a fractured solid deposit of particles. We deposit a millimetric drop of an aqueous suspension of silica nanoparticles (Ludox AS-40, 22 nm in diameter) on a horizontal glass slide. The drop wets the hydrophilic slide and adopts a contact angle of 22◦. The particles accumulate at the contact line and build up a thin deposit of close-packed particles.
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