We reported the interactions of the gravitational sedimentation, the interface shrinkage and the outward capillary flow in drying droplets. This coupling effect is the inference we draw from deposition patterns of both sessile and pendant droplets, which contain particles of different sizes, evaporating on a patterned substrate. The deposition differnence between sessile and pendant droplet containing microparticles indicated that gravitational sedimentation has significant influence on the deposition morphology. A phase diagram shows that the particle deposition process can be divided into two stages: In the first stage, the competition between the interface shrinkage and the gravitational sedimentation determines whether the particles can be captured by the liquid-air interface. In the second stage, the capillary flow takes the particles inside the droplet towards the edge. The deposition morphology is the result of competition and cooperation interactions of the free setting, the interface shrinkage and the outward capillary flow.

Drying droplets on solid substrates has always formed a nonuniform and disordered “coffee ring” stain, which has a great negative effect on the application of inject printing and colloidal assembly. We obtain a macrouniform and micro-ordered pattern through evaporation of a colloidal droplet resting on a liquid substrate. The evaporative convection and the capillary forces were responsible for the formation of the ordered structures, which assembled into a monolayer pattern at the liquid–air interface under the action of the weak capillary flow and shrinkage of the triple line. The central bump deposits with disordered particle stacking on the liquid–liquid interface could be attributed to the fast meeting of the descending particles (gravitational sedimentation) and ascending liquid–liquid interface; they would scatter on the ordered monolayer structure and form the final uniform pattern.