  Evaporating liquid droplets are omnipresent in nature and technology, such as
in inkjet printing, coating, deposition of materials, medical diagnostics,
agriculture, food industry, cosmetics, or spills of liquids. While the
evaporation of pure liquids, liquids with dispersed particles, or even liquid
mixtures has intensively been studied over the last two decades, the
evaporation of ternary mixtures of liquids with different volatilities and
mutual solubilities has not yet been explored. Here we show that the
evaporation of such ternary mixtures can trigger a phase transition and the
nucleation of microdroplets of one of the components of the mixture. As model
system we pick a sessile Ouzo droplet (as known from daily life - a transparent
mixture of water, ethanol, and anise oil) and reveal and theoretically explain
its four life phases: In phase I, the spherical cap-shaped droplet remains
transparent, while the more volatile ethanol is evaporating, preferentially at
the rim of the drop due to the singularity there. This leads to a local ethanol
concentration reduction and correspondingly to oil droplet nucleation there.
This is the beginning of phase II, in which oil microdroplets quickly nucleate
in the whole drop, leading to its milky color which typifies the so-called
'Ouzo-effect'. Once all ethanol has evaporated, the drop, which now has a
characteristic non-spherical-cap shape, has become clear again, with a water
drop sitting on an oil-ring (phase III), finalizing the phase inversion.
Finally, in phase IV, also all water has evaporated, leaving behind a tiny
spherical cap-shaped oil drop.
