posted on 2023-07-13, 10:30authored byYe Hun Choi, Shin-Hyun Kim
Photonic supraballs have been designed by evaporation-induced
crystallization
of colloidal particles confined in emulsion droplets for various applications.
However, it has been a challenge to exclusively produce a single-crystalline
structure in a short consolidation time due to droplet-by-droplet
variation in the evaporation rate. Here, we suggest a pragmatic osmotic
extraction of water from emulsion droplets to achieve a consistent
rate of consolidation and improve the selectivity of crystalline structures.
Two distinct dropletsparticle-laden droplets and salt-dissolved
dropletsare randomly mixed to induce an osmotic flow of water
from the particle droplets to salt droplets. The particle droplets
gradually shrink whereas the salt droplets expand, which causes the
enrichment and crystallization of particles. Importantly, the rate
of enrichment has a relatively small deviation as most particle droplets
are exposed to a similar number of neighboring salt droplets for the
random mixture. Moreover, the rate of enrichment is controlled by
adjusting the concentration of salt. The low salt concentration provides
slow enrichment, enabling dominant production of a single-crystalline
structure in a relatively short consolidation time. By contrast, high
salt concentration causes fast enrichment, yielding an isotropic polycrystalline
structure. The single-crystalline photonic supraballs are structurally
anisotropic and display orientation-dependent colors, potentially
serving as twinkling structural colorants and active color pixels.