Liquid marble particle wetting separation

Liquid marbles to separate wetting (silver nanowires) from non-wetting (graphite and talcum) particles is described here. Two types of liquid marbles are formed by coating the dry mixture test material on pendant or sessile drops. The silver nanowire particles are separated from the graphite or talcum shell by entering into the liquid core of the marbles. The liquid core is extracted into capillary tubes where the presence of silver nanoparticles was confirmed by a blue to colourless change arising from silver-mediated catalytic reduction of methylene blue and sodium borohydride solution. The use of an inclined rotating surface to coat the pendant drop was found to create liquid marbles in a more controllable manner. A platform tilt angle of 15o followed by rotation was found to provide more uniform albeit only partially coating the bottom of the pendant drop.