We study the stress developed during the drying of a colloidal drop of silica nanoparticles. In particular, we use the wrinkling instability of a thin floating sheet to measure the net stress applied by the deposit on the substrate and we focus on the effect of the particle polydispersity. In the case of a bidisperse suspension, we show that a small number of large particles substantially decreases the expected stress, which we interpret as the formation of lower hydrodynamic resistance paths in the porous material. As colloidal suspensions are usually polydisperse, we show for different average particle sizes that the stress is effectively dominated by the larger particles of the distribution and not by the average particle size.
PACS numbers:Drying of colloidal droplets is ubiquitous in processes such as ink-jet printing technologies [1] or spray painting. Recently, new directions for printing techniques have been developed for soft materials to enable applications such as conformable electronics, soft robotics and wearable devices. For instance, electronic circuits can be printed on elastomers [2,3] and human skin [4]. However, deformations of the surface can be induced by the surface tension of a liquid drop [5][6][7] or the consolidation of a colloidal material [8], which could affect the final quality and the function of the printed device. Here, we report measurements of the drying induced stress and highlight the role of polydispersity of the suspension.Previous reported measurements of drying or cracking stresses rely on the deflection of a cantilever beam [9][10][11][12] where a liquid film of a polymer solution or colloidal suspension is coated on a thin flexible plate. In such a geometry, the film dries from the edge toward the center of the film [13], which leads to spatially inhomogeneous states of the material.However, besides the bending, when a stress is applied above a certain limit to a thin sheet, a wrinkling instability can be observed [14][15][16][17]. Recent studies focused on an elastomeric disk floating on a liquid bath with a liquid drop in the center of the disk [1,18,[20][21][22]. In these situations, the stress applied to the membrane is due to the surface tension of the involved liquids. Therefore, these studies of a deformable sheet established models based on Föppl-von Kàrmàn equations to predict the length and the number of wrinkles.In this Letter, we focus on visualizing and measuring the stress induced by the drying of a colloidal drop on a floating membrane (Fig. 1). The mechanical properties of the membrane are chosen carefully to satisfy two conditions. First, the surface tension of the pure liquid drop alone and its weight do not trigger the wrinkling instability ( Fig. 1(a)). Second, the drying-induced consolidation of the colloidal droplet, which induces a larger tensile stress in the membrane, triggers the instability ( Fig. 1(b)). From the length of the wrinkles, we can deduce the tension in the film. Our aim is to examine the effect of particle size and polydispersity ...