Drying of a Microdroplet of Water Suspension of Nanoparticles: from Surface Aggregates to Microcrystal

Abstract

The method of formation of nanoparticle aggregates such as high-coverage spherical shells of microspheres or 3-D micro crystals grown in the geometry unaffected by a substrate is described. In the reported experiment, the evaporation of single levitated water droplet containing 200 nm diameter polystyrene spheres was studied. Successive stages of the drying process were discussed by analyzing the intensity of light elastically scattered by the evaporating droplet. The numerically simulated self-assembly coincides nicely with the observed morphologies resulting from transformation of a droplet of suspension into a solid microcrystal via kinetically driven self-assembly of nanostructures.

arXiv comment5 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Controlled interfacial assembly of 2D curved colloidal crystals and jammed shells
• Temperature dependence of evaporation coeffcient of water in air and nitrogen under atmospheric pressure; study in water droplets

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Evaporation-Induced Nanoparticle Assembly
• Luminescent nanoparticles in a shrinking spherical cavity -- probing the evaporating microdroplets of colloidal suspension -- optical lattices and structural transitions
• A numerical toy model of Langevin dynamics provides real-time visualization of colloidal microdroplet evaporation