Minute concentrations of suspended particles can dramatically alter the behavior of a drying droplet.
After a period of isotropic shrinkage, similar to droplets of a pure liquid, these droplets suddenly buckle
like an elastic shell. While linear elasticity is able to describe the morphology of the buckled droplets, it
fails to predict the onset of buckling. Instead, we find that buckling is coincident with a stress-induced
fluid to solid transition in a shell of particles at a droplet’s surface, occurring when attractive capillary
forces overcome stabilizing electrostatic forces between particles.