Soft colloidal particles such as hydrogel microspheres assemble at air/water or oil/water interfaces,where the soft colloids are highly deformed and their surface polymer chains are highly entangled with eachother.Herein, we report the formation of robust one-dimensional, string-like colloidal assemblies through self-organization of hydrogel microspheres with shape anisotropya tt he air/water interface of sessile droplets.S hape-anisotropic hydrogel microspheres were synthesized via two-step polymerization, wherebyahydrogel shell was formed onto preformed rigid microellipsoids.T he shape anisotropyo ft he hydrogel microspheres was confirmed by transmission electron microscopyand high-speed atomic force microscopya sw ell as by light-scattering measurements.T he present findings are crucial for the understanding of natural self-organization phenomena, where "softness" influences microscopic assembled structures such as those of Nostoc bacteria.Supportinginformation and the ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under: https://doi.
drying phenomena are ubiquitous not only in the laboratory environment, but also in our daily lives.So far, substantial theoretical and experimental effort has been devoted to controlling the drying behavior of colloidal dispersions. For instance, the formation of coffee-ring stains can be suppressed by using various additives or anisotropic particles, as well as by modifying substrates, [3c,4] which leads to various applications including surface coating, ink-jet printing, and chemical/biological sensors. [5] Despite being able to suppress inhomogeneous structures after drying, it remains challenging to control the micropatterns acquired during evaporation of water from sessile droplets that contain colloidal particles.
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