Fig. 5
Understanding the mechanism for structure differentiation. a–f Series of snapshots taken from a fluorescence microscope movie demonstrating the foam formation process in a droplet of liquid crystal with initially well-dispersed quantum dots (QDs). In these images, QD-rich areas appear light and QD-poor areas appear dark. The curved white line in these images is the edge of the droplet, with liquid crystal on the right of this curve. Scale bars for a–f are 100 µm. g A zoomed-in view from e with the arrow indicating inner nematic domain nucleation. h A confocal microscope image of several foam structures suspended in 5CB. Images taken from stack of 40 images, Max projected and false colored using Fiji software. i schematics illustrating the role of secondary nucleation on final structure showing the particle-rich isotropic phase as white and the nematic phase as gray: left: secondary domains nucleate early on while the isotropic domain is still connected, center: secondary domains nucleate after isotropic domains have separated. and right: secondary domains nucleate late, when isotropic domains have already reached a small size
