Capillary rafts and their destabilization

Small objects trapped at an interface are very common in Nature (insects walking on water, ant rafts, bubbles or pollen at the water-air interface, membranes...) and are found in many multiphase industrial processes. The study of such particle-laden interfaces is therefore of practical as well as fundamental importance. Here we report experiments on the self-assembly of spherical particles into capillary rafts at an oil-water interface and elucidate how such rafts sink. We characterize different types of sinking behavior and show that it is possible to obtain ``armored droplets,'' whereby the sinking oil is encapsulated within a shell of particles.