Recent Progress toward Physical Stimuli‐Responsive Emulsions

Wu, Yutian; Zeng, Min; Cheng, Qing; Huang, Caili

doi:10.1002/marc.202200193

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Our paper focuses on these topical areas, rather than attempting to cover the entire field, and is complemented by recent reviews that span the landscape of colloidal science, including Pickering emulsions, colloidosomes, and conceptually related topics. [19][20][21][22][23][24]…”

Section: Smart Droplets As Bio-inspired Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Yang,

Snyder,

Sathyan

et al. 2023

Adv Funct Materials

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The science and technologies of emulsion droplets have been a long‐term focus of extensive research endeavors for their practical utility across a breadth of industries, including pharmaceutical products, oil recovery processes, and the food sciences. However, with advances in materials chemistry and characterization tools, new emerging areas are arising with a focus on “smart droplets”. The versatility of emulsion droplets across is based on their ability to partition and create isolated systems with properties defined by the liquid–liquid interface, while preparative routes allow manipulation of droplet size, stability, and encapsulated contents. As described in this article, significant efforts are being devoted to creating new types of droplets by “activating” this interface through the incorporation of reactive structures that trigger droplet response to applied or environmental stimuli (e.g., pH, temperature, salt, or external fields). Moreover, parallels between droplets and live cells inspire efforts to conceive systems that resemble biological motifs or that can produce cellular behaviors that imitate biology (e.g., swarming, communication, or motion). The authors highlight recent advances in smart droplets, with emphasis on organic, polymer, and/or particle surfactants that give rise to inter‐droplet communication (via aggregation, fusion, division, or mass transfer), droplet vehicles for controlled delivery, autonomous droplet motion, and tunable emulsion inversion. Especially emphasized is the macromolecular design to produce reactive and functional surfactants, which are crucial to responsive droplet behavior and their underlying mechanisms. More generally, the exquisite interplay between materials science and biology inspires the review of this research area that provides unique opportunities for insight and inspiration into the capabilities of new droplet designs.

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Section: Smart Droplets As Bio-inspired Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Yang,

Snyder,

Sathyan

et al. 2023

Adv Funct Materials

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“…[31] Alternative approaches to generating responsive emulsions include the use of small-molecule surfactants and particles as "Pickering" emulsifiers, which have been reviewed by Brown et al [32] and Tang et al [20] The current review focuses on polymeric surfactants; for a broader overview of the literature on responsive emulsions, readers are directed other recent reviews. [33,34]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[ 20 ] The current review focuses on polymeric surfactants; for a broader overview of the literature on responsive emulsions, readers are directed other recent reviews. [ 33,34 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimuli‐Responsive Polymers for Engineered Emulsions

Rajbanshi,

Hilton,

Dreiss

et al. 2024

Macromol. Rapid Commun.

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Emulsions are complex. Dispersing two immiscible phases, thus expanding an interface, requires effort to achieve and the resultant dispersion is thermodynamically unstable, driving the system toward coalescence. Furthermore, physical instabilities, including creaming, arise due to presence of dispersed droplets of different densities to a continuous phase. Emulsions allow the formulation of oils, can act as vehicles to solubilize both hydrophilic and lipophilic molecules, and can be tailored to desirable rheological profiles, including “gel‐like” behavior and shear thinning. The usefulness of emulsions can be further expanded by imparting stimuli‐responsive or “smart” behaviors by inclusion of a stimuli‐responsive emulsifier, polymer or surfactant. This enables manipulation like gelation, breaking, or aggregation, by external triggers such as pH, temperature, or salt concentration changes. This platform generates functional materials for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, oil recovery, and colloid engineering, combining both smart behaviors and intrinsic benefit of emulsions. However, with increased functionality comes greater complexity. This review focuses on the use of stimuli‐responsive polymers for the generation of smart emulsions, motivated by the great adaptability of polymers for this application and their efficacy as steric stabilizers. Stimuli‐responsive emulsions are described according to the trigger used to provide the reader with an overview of progress in this field.

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“…Environmentally stimuli-responsive or switchable emulsions are a novel family of smart emulsion systems, − which can realize the reversible emulsification–demulsification through responding to the external stimuli signals, including light, pH, , CO 2 , , and magnetic field. , Compared to the conventional emulsion systems, the most significant advantage of smart emulsion systems is that the demulsification processes can be achieved without any additional chemical demulsifiers or physical means. In addition, these smart emulsions are recyclable, environmentally friendly, and highly efficient.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational Insights into a CO₂-Responsive Emulsion Prepared Using the Superamphiphile Assembled by Electrostatic Interactions

Zhao,

Zhang,

Zhang

et al. 2023

Langmuir

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The superamphiphiles exhibit broad prospects for fabricating stimuli-responsive emulsions. Because the superamphiphiles are assembled via noncovalent interactions, they have the advantage of fast response and high efficiency. Recently, a series of switchable emulsions using CO2-responsive superamphiphiles have been developed, which extends the applications of CO2-responsive materials in widespread field. However, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding on the switching mechanism related to the assembled structure of superamphiphiles at the oil–water interface. We employed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the reversible emulsification/demulsification process of a responsive emulsion system stabilized by a recently developed responsive superamphiphile (BTOA), which consists of oleic acid (OA) and cationic amine (named 1,3-bis(aminopropyl)tetramethyldisiloxane, BT). The simulation results present the morphologies in both the emulsion and demulsification states. It is found that the ionized OA– and the protonated BT+ together form an adsorption layer at the oil–water interface. The hydrophobic parts of BT+ are inserted into the adsorption layer, and the two amine groups contact the water phase. This adsorption layer reduces the interfacial tension and stabilizes the emulsion. After the bubbling of CO2, the surfactants were fully protonated to OA and BT2+. Because of the changes in the molecular polarity, OA and BT2+ entered the oil and water phases, respectively, resulting in demulsification. The structural and dynamical properties were analyzed to reveal the different intermolecular interactions that were responsible for the reversible reversibility of the emulsion. The observations are considered to be complementary to experimental studies and are expected to provide deeper insights into studies on developing responsive materials via supramolecular assemblies.

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Recent Progress toward Physical Stimuli‐Responsive Emulsions

Cited by 12 publications

References 89 publications

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Stimuli‐Responsive Polymers for Engineered Emulsions

Computational Insights into a CO₂-Responsive Emulsion Prepared Using the Superamphiphile Assembled by Electrostatic Interactions

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Recent Progress toward Physical Stimuli‐Responsive Emulsions

Cited by 12 publications

References 89 publications

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Smart Droplets Stabilized by Designer Surfactants: From Biomimicry to Active Motion to Materials Healing

Stimuli‐Responsive Polymers for Engineered Emulsions

Computational Insights into a CO2-Responsive Emulsion Prepared Using the Superamphiphile Assembled by Electrostatic Interactions

Contact Info

Product

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About

Computational Insights into a CO₂-Responsive Emulsion Prepared Using the Superamphiphile Assembled by Electrostatic Interactions