Liang-jie Lai1, Chih-Chung Chang1, Yun-ting Chen1, Hui Chen1, and Keng-hui Lin2. (1) National Central University, Jhongli City, Taiwan, (2) Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Here we observe new types of colloidal clusters produced from oil-in-water emulsions with microspheres and polymer dispersed in oil droplets. We follow the cluster formation process as Manoharan's work [1]. The polymer induces depletion interaction between microspheres. When the number of particles N inside the droplet is larger than 4 and not equal to 6, we observe new configurations of final packing besides besides what Manoharan observed. Extra configurations of packing are due to depletion interaction which gives rise to different initial packing of microspheres on the surface of oil droplets. [1] V.N. Manoharan, M.T. Elsesser, D.J. Pine. Science 301, 483 (2003)