Universal emulsion stabilization from the arrested adsorption of rough particles at liquid-liquid interfaces

Michele Zanini, Claudia Marschelke, Svetoslav E. Anachkov, Emanuele Marini, Alla Synytska and Lucio Isa ()
Additional contact information
Michele Zanini: Laboratory for Interfaces, Soft Matter and Assembly, ETH Zurich
Claudia Marschelke: Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research
Svetoslav E. Anachkov: Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Sofia University
Emanuele Marini: Laboratory for Interfaces, Soft Matter and Assembly, ETH Zurich
Alla Synytska: Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research
Lucio Isa: Laboratory for Interfaces, Soft Matter and Assembly, ETH Zurich

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Surface heterogeneities, including roughness, significantly affect the adsorption, motion and interactions of particles at fluid interfaces. However, a systematic experimental study, linking surface roughness to particle wettability at a microscopic level, is currently missing. Here we synthesize a library of all-silica microparticles with uniform surface chemistry, but tuneable surface roughness and study their spontaneous adsorption at oil–water interfaces. We demonstrate that surface roughness strongly pins the particles’ contact lines and arrests their adsorption in long-lived metastable positions, and we directly measure the roughness-induced interface deformations around isolated particles. Pinning imparts tremendous contact angle hysteresis, which can practically invert the particle wettability for sufficient roughness, irrespective of their chemical nature. As a unique consequence, the same rough particles stabilize both water-in-oil and oil-in-water emulsions depending on the phase they are initially dispersed in. These results both shed light on fundamental phenomena concerning particle adsorption at fluid interfaces and indicate future design rules for particle-based emulsifiers.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15701 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms15701

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15701

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().