  When liquid droplets nucleate and grow in a polymer network, compressive
stresses can significantly increase their internal pressure, reaching values
that far exceed the Laplace pressure. When droplets have grown in a polymer
network with a stiffness gradient, droplets in relatively stiff regions of the
network tend to dissolve, favoring growth of droplets in softer regions. Here,
we show that this elastic ripening can be strong enough to reverse the
direction of Ostwald ripening: large droplets can shrink to feed the growth of
smaller ones. To numerically model these experiments, we generalize the theory
of elastic ripening to account for gradients in solubility alongside gradients
in mechanical stiffness.
