When a liquid film of a colloidal solution consisting of particles of different sizes is dried on a substrate, the colloids often stratify, where smaller colloids are laid upon larger colloids. This phenomenon is counterintuitive because larger colloids which have a smaller diffusion constant, are expected to remain near the surface during the drying process, leaving a layer of larger colloids on top of smaller colloids. Here we show that the phenomenon is caused by the interaction between the colloids, and can be explained by a diffusion model accounting for the interaction between the colloids. By studying the evolution equations both numerically and analytically, we derive the condition at which the stratified structures are obtained.

Solvent evaporation in soft‐matter solutions (solutions of colloidal particles, polymers, and their mixtures) is an important process in material making and in the printing and coating industries. The solvent‐evaporation process determines the structure of materials and strongly affects their performance. Solvent evaporation involves many physicochemical processes: flow, diffusion, crystallization, gelation, glass transition, etc. and is quite complex. Here, recent progress in this important process is reported, with a special focus on theoretical and simulation studies.

We utilize the wormlike chain model in the framework of the self-consistent field theory to investigate the influence of chain rigidity on the phase diagram of $AB$ diblock copolymers in the full three-dimensional space. We develop an efficient numerical scheme that can be used to calculate the physical properties of ordered microstructures self-assembled from semiflexible block copolymers. The calculation describes the entire physical picture of the phase diagram, crossing from the flexible over to rodlike polymer behavior.