Van der Waals Emulsions: Emulsions Stabilized by Surface-Inactive, Hydrophilic Particles via van der Waals Attraction

Paula Facal Marina; Chongling Cheng; Rossen Sedev; Antonio Stocco; Bernard P Binks; Dayang Wang

doi:10.1002/anie.201805410

Van der Waals Emulsions: Emulsions Stabilized by Surface-Inactive, Hydrophilic Particles via van der Waals Attraction

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2018 Jul 20;57(30):9510-9514. doi: 10.1002/anie.201805410. Epub 2018 Jun 20.

Authors

Paula Facal Marina¹, Chongling Cheng², Rossen Sedev¹, Antonio Stocco³, Bernard P Binks⁴, Dayang Wang²

Affiliations

¹ Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, 5095, Australia.
² State Key Laboratory for Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China.
³ Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (L2C), UMR 5221 CNRS-, University of Montpellier, 34095, Montpellier, France.
⁴ School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK.

PMID: 29808514
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201805410

Abstract

Surface-inactive, highly hydrophilic particles are utilized to effectively and reversibly stabilize oil-in-water emulsions. This is a result of attractive van der Waals forces between particles and oil droplets in water, which are sufficient to trap the particles in close proximity to oil-water interfaces when repulsive forces between particles and oil droplets are suppressed. The emulsifying efficiency of the highly hydrophilic particles is determined by van der Waals attraction between particle monolayer shells and oil droplets enclosed therein and is inversely proportional to the particle size, while their stabilizing efficiency is determined by van der Waals attraction between single particles and oil droplets, which is proportional to the particle size. This differentiation in mechanism between emulsification and stabilization will significantly advance our knowledge of emulsions, thus enabling better control and design of emulsion-based technologies in practice.

Keywords: colloids; emulsions; interactions; interfaces; particles.