Abstract
Understanding of the behavior of an individual droplet suspended in a liquid and subjected to a stress is important for studying and designing more complex systems, such as emulsions. Here, we present an experimental study of the behavior of a particle-covered droplet and its particle shell under compressive stress. The stress was induced by an application of a DC electric field. We studied how the particle coverage (φ), particle size (d), and the strength of an electric field (E) influence the magnitude of the droplet deformation (D). The experimental results indicate that adding electrically insulating particles to a droplet interface drastically changes the droplet deformation by increasing its magnitude. We also found that the magnitude of the deformation is not retraceable during the electric field sweeping, i.e., the strain-stress curves form a hysteresis loop due to the energy dissipation. The field-induced droplet deformation was accompanied by structural and morphological changes in the particle shell. We found that shells made of smaller particles were more prone to jamming and formation of arrested shells after removal of an electric stress.
Highlights
Droplets covered by granular or colloidal particles have recently been actively studied from the perspective of both the fundamental and the applied sciences
In this paper, our objectives are to show: (i) how the particle coverage, particle size, and the strength of the E field influence the magnitude of steady-state deformation of a droplet with a particle shell; and (ii) how the particle size and the strength of the E field affect the recovery of a particle shell and the arrangements of the surface particles
We wondered how the particle coverage and the particle size as well as the strength of the E field influenced the magnitude of the droplet deformation
Summary
Droplets covered by granular or colloidal particles have recently been actively studied from the perspective of both the fundamental and the applied sciences. Knowledge of the stability and mechanics of an individual particle-covered droplet is essential, e.g., for the efficient fabrication of Pickering emulsions [18], for designing emulsions with controlled stability [19,20], and, in general, for the further development of the above mentioned research fields In this context, several research groups have studied theoretically and experimentally the deformation [21,22,23,24], relaxation [25,26], dynamics [27], and mechanical properties of particle-laden droplets [28,29].
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