Issue 5, 2023

Long term phase separation dynamics in liquid crystal-enriched microdroplets obtained from binary fluid mixtures

Abstract

The dynamics of long term phase separation in binary liquid mixtures remains a subject of fundamental interest. Here, we study a binary liquid mixture, where the minority phase is confined to a liquid crystal (LC)-rich droplet, by investigating the evolution of size, defect and mesogen alignment over time. We track the binary liquid mixture evolving towards equilibrium by visualising the configuration of the liquid crystal droplet through polarisation microscopy. We compare our experimental findings with computational simulations and elucidate differences between bulk phases and confined droplets based on the respective thermodynamics of phase separation. Our work provides insights on how phase transitions on the microscale can deviate from bulk phase diagrams with relevance to other material systems, such as the liquid–liquid phase separation of polymer and protein solutions.

Graphical abstract: Long term phase separation dynamics in liquid crystal-enriched microdroplets obtained from binary fluid mixtures

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 ต.ค. 2565
Accepted
08 ม.ค. 2566
First published
09 ม.ค. 2566
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Soft Matter, 2023,19, 1017-1024

Long term phase separation dynamics in liquid crystal-enriched microdroplets obtained from binary fluid mixtures

M. Patel, S. Shimizu, M. A. Bates, A. Fernandez-Nieves and S. Guldin, Soft Matter, 2023, 19, 1017 DOI: 10.1039/D2SM01348G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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