Modeling Solution Drying by Moving a Liquid-Vapor Interface

A method of modeling the drying process of a soft matter solution by moving the liquid-vapor interface in an implicit solvent is applied to various solutions including films and droplets. For a solution of particle and polymer mixtures, drying outcomes similar to those found with an explicit solvent model are observed. For a bidisperse nanoparticle suspension droplet, a core-shell cluster of nanoparticles can be obtained via the "small-on-outside" stratification mechanism. Polymeric particles with various morphologies, including Janus particles, core-shell particles, onion-like structures, and patchy particles, can be produced from drying polymer solution droplets by combining fast drying with a controlled interaction between the polymers and the liquid-vapor interface. This moving interface method can be applied to the drying process of a wide range of systems including respiratory droplets. The limitation and possible extension of the method are also discussed.