Crack morphologies in drying suspension drops

Abstract

A drop of an aqueous suspension of nanoparticles placed on a substrate forms a solid deposit as it dries. For dilute suspensions, particles accumulate within a narrow ring at the drop edge, whereas a uniform coating covering the entire wetted area forms for concentrated suspensions. In between these extremes, we report two additional regimes characterized by non-uniform deposit thicknesses and by distinct crack morphologies. We show that both the deposit shape and the number of cracks are controlled exclusively by the initial particle volume fraction. The different regimes share a common avalanche-like crack propagation dynamics, as a result of the delamination of the deposit from the substrate.