Controlled Collapse of

Liquid Marbles
By Mavilla Pravallika & Sarika Soman

Under the guidance of Dr. Subramanyan Namboodiri Varanakkottu,

Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, NIT Calicut
CONTENTS
● OVERVIEW
● MOTIVATION
● OBJECTIVE
● WORKING PRINCIPLE
● EXPERIMENTS
● RESULTS
● CONCLUSION
● FUTURE WORKS
OVERVIEW
Existing techniques for collapsing liquid marbles
● PNIPAAm [1]
● Hydrophobic magnetic material [2]
● Light - triggered [3][4]

Drawbacks of existing techniques

● Dependent on the encapsulating material
● Complex setup
● Relies on peripheral components
Surfactant-Mediated Collapse of Liquid Marbles and Directed
Assembly of Particles at the Liquid Surface
Pradip Singha, Sreena Swaminathan, Ajeet Singh Yadav, and Subramanyan
Namboodiri Varanakkottu

Langmuir, 2019, 35 (13), pp 4566–4576

DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b03821
MOTIVATION
● Microfluidic devices :
Lab-on-a-chip
● Use liquid marbles in
digital microfluidics
OBJECTIVE

● Study effect of core and base liquid surface tension on stability

of liquid marbles.
● Determining the collapsing conditions for different volumes
● Attempt controlled collapse using light
So, what are liquid marbles?
PRINCIPLE : ENERGY CONSERVATION
 Our aim: Controlled
How to collapsing and transport
manipulate LMs using light
1. Stability of liquid marble depends on
surface tension.
2. Surface tension varies with
temperature.
Working Principle
Irradiating LM using laser
causes decrease in surface
tension leading to collapse.
 σcore < σcritical

σcore

σbase

σcore > σcritical σcore <

σcritical
EXPERIMENTS
 Surface tension of interface takes
time to reach equilibrium value
EXPERIMENT depending on

● Diffusion rate
Determining equilibrium surface
tension ● Absorbance rate
 PENDANT DROP METHOD

1.0mM SDBS 0.1mM SDBS

SDBS - Sodium Dodecyl Benzene Sulphonate

 Stability depends on:

EXPERIMENT ● Surface tension of base liquid

● Surface tension of core liquid

Determining collapsing condition
● Volume of LM
 Vary core
Fix surface
Fix volume concentration
tension of
of LM till LM
base liquid
collapses

Repeat for each volume

Repeat for each base liquid

 BASE LIQUID CORE LIQUID VOLUME
1. Water SDBS surfactant 2µL to 8µL in
2. SDBS surfactant solutions of 0.4mM steps of 1µL
solution (0.5mM) (43±1 mN/m) to
1.0mM (32±1 mN/m)
Collapsing condition of liquid marbles in terms of concentration of core
liquid
Collapsing condition for different LMs
Role of the charge of the surfactant :

Since
● SDBS - anionic
● CTAB (Cetrimonium bromide) - cationic

Repeated the experiment with CTAB.

CTAB SDBS
● CTAB follows a similar trend.

● There is a considerable difference in

the collapse points.

● Hence, the collapse condition doesn't

just depend on the absolute value of
the core surface tension.
 ● Laser irradiation increases
EXPERIMENT temperature
● Increase in temperature lowers
Laser irradiation of dye solution surface tension
● Green laser (532 nm) was used for
irradiation
● Suitable dye absorbing in the
wavelength range was selected
Temperature measured upon laser irradiation by thermal
imaging
 ● Laser irradiation increases
EXPERIMENT temperature
● Increase in temperature lowers
Collapse of LMs using laser surface tension
irradiation
RESULTS
Surface tension Vs time graph of SDBS and Rhodamine b solution
Conclusion
● We were able to establish a conclusive trend regarding the
dependence of collapsing point of liquid marble on the
surface tension of core and base liquids.
What can we do next?

Collapse could be achieved by varying different factors such as

● colour of the encapsulating particles
● Type of dye used
● Type of the surfactant used
● further study on the charge effects
References
1. Banuprasad, T. N.; Vinay, T. V.; Subash, C. K.; Varghese, S.; George, S. D.;
Varanakkottu, S. N. Fast Transport of Water Droplets over a Thermo-Switchable
Surface Using Rewritable Wettability Gradient. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2017,
9 (33), 28046–28054.

2. Zhang, L.; Cha, D.; Wang, P. Remotely Controllable Liquid Marbles. Adv.
Mater. 2012, 24 (35), 4756–4760.
3. Paven, M.; Mayama, H.; Sekido, T.; Butt, H.-J.; Nakamura, Y.; Fujii, S.
Light-Driven Delivery and Release of Materials Using Liquid Marbles. Adv. Funct.
Mater. 2016, 26 (19), 3199–3206.
4.Tan, T. T. Y.; Ahsan, A.; Reithofer, M. R.; Tay, S. W.; Tan, S. Y.; Hor, T. S. A.;
Chin, J. M.; Chew, B. K. J.; Wang, X. Photoresponsive Liquid Marbles and Dry
Water. Langmuir 2014, 30 (12), 3448–3454.