Figure 1
(a) Schematic showing the capsule geometry investigated. (b) Upper: buckling of a capsule; scale bar is
. Lower: buckling begins at the thinnest part of the shell for capsules with thickness inhomogeneity
; scale bars are
. (c) Fraction of capsules buckled over time, for three different osmotic pressures
. Capsules have mean shell thickness
, outer radius
, and
. Smooth lines show exponential fits. (d) Total fraction of capsules that ultimately buckle over time for varying
, for capsules with
,
, and
,
, and 0.20 (gray circles),
,
, and 0.23 (red triangles), and
,
, and 0.19 (blue squares). Smooth curves are fits to the data using the cumulative distribution function of the normal distribution. Inset shows the mean osmotic pressure of each fit versus
; vertical and horizontal error bars show the standard deviation of each fit and estimated variation in
, respectively. Straight line shows
scaling. (e) Time delay before the onset of buckling,
, normalized by
, for varying
, for the same capsules as in (d). Closed points show
while open points show
. Vertical error bars show uncertainty arising from estimated variation in
. Black line shows
scaling. (f) Time delay
decreases with the wait time before a shell is polymerized,
; capsules have
and
, and are buckled at
. Black line shows theoretical prediction coupling shell theory and Darcy’s law, as described in the text, with
.
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