Size-Dependent Phase Separation in Emulsion Droplets

Jia Man; Steven Chien; Shuaishuai Liang; Jiang Li; Haosheng Chen

doi:10.1002/cphc.201701296

Size-Dependent Phase Separation in Emulsion Droplets

Chemphyschem. 2018 Aug 17;19(16):1995-1998. doi: 10.1002/cphc.201701296. Epub 2018 Feb 19.

Authors

Jia Man¹, Steven Chien², Shuaishuai Liang³, Jiang Li³, Haosheng Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P. R. China.
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
³ School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Beijing, 100083, P. R. China.

PMID: 29399932
DOI: 10.1002/cphc.201701296

Abstract

Phase separation occurs in emulsion droplets containing poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA), glycerol, and ethanol to form a glycerol-in-PEGDA structure, and the phase separation process is found to depend on the droplet size. The mechanism of this size-dependent phase separation is dependent on the droplet sizes changing the phase separation time by changing the evaporation speed of mutual solvent ethanol, and the relationship between the separation time T and the droplet diameter D is derived as T≈D² , which has been validated by experiment results. According to this finding, the structures of the droplets can be designed by applying UV curing at different stages of the phase separation, and the monodispersity of droplets is necessary to achieve polymerized particles with the same structure.

Keywords: UV curing; emulsions; microcapsules; microfluidics; phase separation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding