Compressed liquid marble ruptures at edge

Abstract

An improved understanding of the rupture dynamics for liquid marbles is essential for their application in sensors, miniaturized reactions, biomedical scaffolds, the synthesis of functional materials, and others. This work suggests that a compressed liquid marble always ruptures at the edge of the contact area between the marble and a substrate. The rupture dynamics of a compressed marble is visualized with a particle-level resolution using a marble coated with monodispersed microparticles. High-speed photography indicates that the particle density decreases significantly from the center to the edge, and the sparse particle layer at the edge initiates rupturing. Such a particle density distribution is well depicted with our proposed model, which predicts the theoretical values that agree well with the experimental results. This study generalizes the understanding for the rupture dynamics of particle-stabilized droplets and is beneficial to any applications that involve the rupture or coalescence of liquid marbles as well as Pickering emulsions.