Recirculatory Solvotaxis of a Nematic Droplet on Water Surface Enabling Miniaturization.

Self-organized contact line instabilities (CLI) of a macroscopic liquid crystal (LC) droplet can be an ingenious pathway to generate a large collection of miniaturized LC drops. For example, when a larger drop of volatile solvent (e.g.

Particle Size and Rheology of Silica Particle Networks at the Air-Water Interface.

Silica nanoparticles find utility in different roles within the commercial domain. They are either employed in bulk within pharmaceutical formulations or at interfaces in anti-coalescing agents. Thus, studying the particle attributes contributing to the characteristics of silica particle-laden interfaces is of interest.

Microrheology of Mucin-Albumin Assembly Using Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy.

Mucus plays an important role in the protection of the epithelial cells from various pathogens and low pH environments besides helping in the absorption of nutrients. Alteration of the rheology of the mucus layer leads to various disease conditions such as cystic fibrosis, Crohn's disease, and gastric ulcers, among others. Importantly, mucus consists of various mucins along with proteins such as immunoglobulin, lysozyme, and albumin.

Self-Organized Liquid Crystal Droplets as Phototunable Softmasks.

A single-step self-organized pathway is harnessed to generate large-area and high-density liquid-crystal (LC) microdroplets via rapid spreading of an LC-laden volatile liquid film on an aqueous surfactant bath. The surfactant loading on the water bath and LC loading in the solvent fluid help in tuning the size, periodicity, and ordering of LC microdroplets. Remarkably, the experiments reveal a transition from a spinodal to heterogeneous nucleation pathway of dewetting when the surfactant loading is modulated from below to beyond the critical micellar concentration in the aqueous phase.

Pathologic evidence of retinoblastoma seeds supported by field emission scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the pathology of retinoblastoma (RB) seeds with supportive evidence by field emission scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy.

Methods: This study was a laboratory-based observational study. Enucleated eyeballs received in the ocular pathology department of a tertiary eye care center in northeast India were included in the cohort after obtaining written informed consent during the surgery.

Functional liquid droplets for analyte sensing and energy harvesting.

Over the past century, rapid miniaturization of technologies has helped in the development of efficient, flexible, portable, robust, and compact applications with minimal wastage of materials. In this direction, of late, the usage of mesoscale liquid droplets has emerged as an alternative platform because of the following advantages: (i) a droplet is incompressible and at the same time deformable, (ii) interfacial area of a spherical droplet is minimum for a given amount of mass; and (iii) a droplet interface allows facile mass, momentum, and energy transfer. Subsequently, such attributes have aided towards the design of diverse droplet-based microfluidic technologies.

Microdroplet photofuel cells to harvest high-density energy and dye degradation.

In this study, a membraneless photofuel cell, namely, μ-DropFC, was designed and developed to harvest chemical and solar energies simultaneously. The prototypes can also perform environmental remediation to demonstrate their multitasking potential as a sustainable hybrid device in a single embodiment. A hydrogen peroxide (HO) microdroplet at optimal pH and salt loading was utilized as a fuel integrated with Al as an anode and zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPC)-coated Cu as a cathode.