Getting Out Of A Tight Spot: Physics Of Flow Through Porous Materials

We also use double emulsions, drops within drops, as templates to form another class of microcapsule – drops coated with thin, porous, polymer shells. We investigate how, under sufficient osmotic pressure, these microcapsules buckle, and show how the inhomogeneity in the shell structure can guide the folding pathway taken by a microcapsule as it buckles. Finally, we study the expansion and rupture of microcapsules under the influence of electrostatic forces. For both buckling and expansion, we show that the deformation dynamics can be understood by coupling shell theory with Darcy’s law for flow through the porous microcapsule shell.