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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 17: Theorie and Simulation - organized by Jens-Uwe Sommer (Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden, Dresden) (joint session CPP/DY)

CPP 17.10: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 24. März 2021, 14:20–14:40, CPPb

Mechanics of shape-shifting droplets — •Ireth Garcia-Aguilar¹, Piermarco Fonda¹, Eli Sloutskin², and Luca Giomi¹ — ¹Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands — ²Department of Physics and Institute of Nanotechnology & Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

It has been long understood that dispersed liquid droplets are spherical in order to minimize the tension at their interface. Surprisingly, oil emulsion droplets in water have been observed to spontaneously deform into polyhedral shapes when cooling down the system. The equilibrium shape of a droplet at some temperature depends on its initial volume but all deformations take place below the freezing point of the surfactant monolayer, while the bulk oil and water remain liquid. The frozen interface forms an hexagonal lattice which is topologically constrained to accommodate defects. These produce large stresses that induce in and out-of-plane deformations in the crystal which in turn are opposed by the interfacial tension between oil and water. Initially, it was thought that this competition determines the droplet shape; however, this alone can not explain the size dependence of the deformations. By modeling the interface as a 2D elastic surface and studying its equilibrium geometry, we found a mechanism that explains the size-scaling behaviour. Interestingly, crystalline defects are not the only peculiarity playing a role in shaping the droplets.