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research article

The Molecular Mechanism of Nanodroplet Stability

Zdrali, Evangelia  
•
Chen, Yixing
•
Okur, Halil I.
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2017
Acs Nano

Mixtures of nano- and microscopic oil droplets in water have recently been rediscovered as miniature reaction vessels in microfluidic environments and are important constituents of many environmental systems, food, personal care, and medical products. The oil nanodroplet/water interface stabilized by surfactants determines the physicochemical properties of the droplets. Surfactants are thought to stabilize nanodroplets by forming densely packed monolayers that shield the oil phase from the water. This idea has been inferred from droplet stability measurements in combination with molecular structural data obtained from extended planar interfaces. Here, we present a molecular level investigation of the surface structure and stability of nano droplets and show that the surface structure of nanodroplets is significantly different from that of extended planar interfaces. Charged surfactants form monolayers that are more than 1 order of magnitude more dilute than geometrically packed ones, and there is no experimental correlation between stability and surfactant surface density. Moreover, dilute negatively charged surfactant monolayers produce more stable nanodroplets than dilute positively charged and dense geometrically packed neutral surfactant monolayers. Droplet stability is found to depend on the relative cooperativity between charge-charge, charge-dipole, and hydrogen-bonding interactions. The difference between extended planar interfaces and nanoscale interfaces stems from a difference in the thermally averaged total charge-charge interactions in the two systems. Low dielectric oil droplets with a size smaller than the Debye length in oil permit repulsive interactions between like charges from opposing interfaces in small droplets. This behavior is generic and extends up to the micrometer length scale.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1021/acsnano.7b05100
Web of Science ID

WOS:000418990200037

Author(s)
Zdrali, Evangelia  
Chen, Yixing
Okur, Halil I.
Wilkins, David M.
Roke, Sylvie
Date Issued

2017

Publisher

Amer Chemical Soc

Published in
Acs Nano
Volume

11

Issue

12

Start page

12111

End page

12120

Subjects

nanodroplets

•

stability

•

interface

•

water

•

sum frequency scattering

•

charge

•

screening

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LBP  
Available on Infoscience
January 15, 2018
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/144062
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