Long term phase separation dynamics in liquid crystal-enriched microdroplets obtained from binary fluid mixtures

The dynamics of long term phase separation in binary liquid mixtures remains a subject of fundamental interest. Here, we study a binary liquid mixture, where the minority phase is confined to a liquid crystal (LC)-rich droplet, by investigating the evolution of size, defect and mesogen alignment over time. We track the binary liquid mixture evolving towards equilibrium by visualising the configuration of the liquid crystal droplet through polarisation microscopy. We compare our experimental findings with computational simulations and elucidate the bulk vs microdroplet difference based on the thermodynamics of phase separation. Our work provides insights on how phase transitions on the microscale can deviate from bulk ph