We demonstrate here that the pattern evolution in a binary liquid mixture containing glass spheres is strongly affected by the dynamic coupling between phase separation and wetting. Because of the difference in the wettability to glass between the two phases, the glass particles are preferentially included in the more wettable phase. The resulting pattern is strongly dependent on whether the spheres are mobile or immobile. For a high density of mobile particles, we find that an initially random pattern of spheres transforms into an ordered pattern because of geometrical confinement of particles into the more wettable phase.

• Received 27 May 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.72.2581