2023/05/03 by Carolina van Baalen, van Baalen, Carolina, Jacopo Vialetto +3
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2305.01929
openalex publication_date 2023/05/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Monolayers of colloidal particles at oil-water interfaces readily crystalize owing to electrostatic repulsion, which is often mediated through the oil. However, little attempts exist to control it using oil-soluble electrolytes. We probe the interactions amongst charged hydrophobic micospheres confined at a water/hexadecane interface and show that repulsion can be continuously tuned over orders of magnitude upon introducing minor amounts of an organic salt into the oil. Our results show that charged groups at the particle/oil interface are subject to an associative discharging mechanism, analogous to the charge regulation kinetics observed for charged colloids in non-polar solvents.