Smart Materials for Advanced Environmental Applications
CHAPTER 4: Responsive Particle-Stabilized Emulsions: Formation and Applications
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Published:23 Feb 2016
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Man-hin Kwok, To Ngai, 2016. "Responsive Particle-Stabilized Emulsions: Formation and Applications", Smart Materials for Advanced Environmental Applications, Peng Wang
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Responsive Pickering emulsions have attracted increasing attention over the last decade. These ‘surfactant-free’ emulsions are stabilized by particulate stabilizers and their properties and stability can be controlled by applying stimuli to the system. The excellent stability of Pickering emulsions makes them even more beneficial when they are compared to conventional emulsions which are stabilized by low molecular weight surfactants or amphiphilic polymers. Different responsive Pickering emulsions systems have been developed and reported by researchers. For example, they include pH responsiveness, magnetic responsiveness, thermo-responsiveness, ion-specific systems and photo-responsiveness. In this chapter, the formation and stabilization of such emulsions are discussed, with examples of different categories of particulate stabilizers, including inorganic, biological and polymeric particles. The discussion then moves on to the applications of such responsive emulsions in the pharmaceutical industry, petroleum processing, extraction and Pickering emulsion polymerization.