The behavior of capillary suspensions at diverse length scales: from single capillary bridges to bulk

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structure and behavior of capillary suspensions across different length scales, from individual capillary bridges to the bulk material, highlighting their unique properties and potential applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of capillary suspensions, emphasizing the influence of bridge dynamics and network heterogeneity on their mechanical properties.

Findings

Capillary bridges exhibit unique breaking and coalescence behaviors.

Network heterogeneity significantly affects suspension properties.

Understanding multi-scale behavior aids in tailoring material properties.

Abstract

Liquid-liquid-solid systems are becoming increasingly common in everyday life with many possible applications. Here, we focus on a special case of such liquid-liquid-solid systems, namely, capillary suspensions. These capillary suspensions originate from particles that form a network based on capillary forces and are typically composed of solids in a bulk liquid with an added secondary liquid. The structure of particle networks based on capillary bridges possesses unique properties compared with networks formed via other attractive interactions where these differences are inherently related to the properties of the capillary bridges, such as bridge breaking and coalescence between adjacent bridges. Thus, to tailor the mechanical properties of capillary suspensions to specific requirements, it is important to understand the influences on different length scales ranging from the dynamics of the bridges with varying external stimuli to the often heterogeneous network structure.