Fig. 4.

Timed-release of inner layers of a multiple emulsion made from a water, DEP, ethanol (0.15:0.47:0.38) mixture in the presence of $0.05$ wt$\%$ F127 surfactant. (A) Snapshots of a movie (see Movie S3) showing the sequential release of inner layers into the continuous phase. (B) Cumulative distribution of inner layers released into the outer aqueous phase versus time for a single burst of events in a triple emulsion $N=3$ and two bursts for the quintuple emulsion $N=5$ from A. A histogram of the release times for the triple emulsion is given in Inset. (C) A confocal image of the cross-section of a z stack of a quintuple emulsion, labeled with Nile Red dye. (D) Lifetime of inner layers versus their size. The fit represents the time at which the buoyancy force begins to dominate, given by the relation $r=A\exp (-\sqrt{t/{\tau }_c})$, which implies that ln (r) is linear in $\sqrt{t}$, as shown in Inset.