Using Hybrid Coating to Fabricate Highly Stable and Expandable Transparent Liquid Marbles.

Liquid marbles (LMs) are microliter-scale droplets coated with hydrophobic solid particles. The particle size and hydrophobicity of the surface coating determine their properties, such as transparency, expandability, and resistance to evaporation and coalescence, one or more of which can be critical to their application as microreactors. This study reports the use of a mixture of two different hydrophobic powders for fabrication of LMs for colorimetric assays: trichloro(1,1,2,2-perfluorooctyl) silane-linked silica gel (modified silica gel (MSG), particle size: 40-75 μm) and hexamethyldisilazane-linked fumed silica (modified fumed silica (MFS), average aggregate length: 200-300 nm).