“…A number of diesters namely, diethyl succinate, diethyl fumarate, diethyl maleate, diethyl malate and diethyl tartrate, were additionally investigated in order to further assess the functional groups required for obtaining a proper dispersing effect. This was done both in order to be able to predict optimal molecules for further testing but also to complement the limited literature on the polar screen theory which describes the ability of some small polar molecules to induce good stabilisation through an electrostatic mechanism (31,32,33). A previous study, in a similar system, has additionally shown a strong correlation between the number and type of groups being present and the resulting dispersing properties (34).…”