Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions
We report the coexistence of stress-bearing percolation with arrested phase separation in a colloidal system of thermoresponsive nanoemulsions spanning a broad range of volume fractions (0.10 ≤ ϕ ≤ 0.33) and temperatures (22 °C ≤ T ≤ 65 °C). Here, gelation is driven by short-range interdroplet polym...
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Royal Society of Chemistry
2016
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101168 |
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author | Doyle, Patrick S. Hsiao, Lilian |
author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering |
author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering Doyle, Patrick S. Hsiao, Lilian |
author_sort | Doyle, Patrick S. |
collection | MIT |
description | We report the coexistence of stress-bearing percolation with arrested phase separation in a colloidal system of thermoresponsive nanoemulsions spanning a broad range of volume fractions (0.10 ≤ ϕ ≤ 0.33) and temperatures (22 °C ≤ T ≤ 65 °C). Here, gelation is driven by short-range interdroplet polymer bridging at elevated temperatures. Direct visualization of the gel microstructure shows that nanoemulsions undergo a homogenous percolation transition prior to phase separation. Rheological characterization shows that both the percolated and the phase separated structures are capable of supporting a significant amount of elastic stress. As the system is heated, the sequential onset of these phase transitions is responsible for the unusual two-step increase in the linear viscoelasticity of the gels. In addition, we find that slowing the heating rate significantly reduces the elasticity of the gels at high temperatures. Our results suggest that the formation of metastable gelled states not only depends on the attraction strength and volume fraction of the system, but is also sensitive to the rate at which the attraction strength is increased. |
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id | mit-1721.1/101168 |
institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
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publishDate | 2016 |
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spelling | mit-1721.1/1011682022-09-28T13:38:28Z Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions Doyle, Patrick S. Hsiao, Lilian Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering Hsiao, Lilian Doyle, Patrick S. We report the coexistence of stress-bearing percolation with arrested phase separation in a colloidal system of thermoresponsive nanoemulsions spanning a broad range of volume fractions (0.10 ≤ ϕ ≤ 0.33) and temperatures (22 °C ≤ T ≤ 65 °C). Here, gelation is driven by short-range interdroplet polymer bridging at elevated temperatures. Direct visualization of the gel microstructure shows that nanoemulsions undergo a homogenous percolation transition prior to phase separation. Rheological characterization shows that both the percolated and the phase separated structures are capable of supporting a significant amount of elastic stress. As the system is heated, the sequential onset of these phase transitions is responsible for the unusual two-step increase in the linear viscoelasticity of the gels. In addition, we find that slowing the heating rate significantly reduces the elasticity of the gels at high temperatures. Our results suggest that the formation of metastable gelled states not only depends on the attraction strength and volume fraction of the system, but is also sensitive to the rate at which the attraction strength is increased. United States. Army Research Office (Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies Grant W911NF-09-D-0001) National Science Foundation (U.S.). Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (Program) (Grant DMR-1419807) 2016-02-12T16:56:52Z 2016-02-12T16:56:52Z 2015-09 2015-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1744-683X 1744-6848 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101168 Hsiao, Lilian C., and Patrick S. Doyle. “Celebrating Soft Matter’s 10th Anniversary: Sequential Phase Transitions in Thermoresponsive Nanoemulsions.” Soft Matter 11, no. 43 (2015): 8426–8431. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5sm01581b Soft Matter Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ application/pdf Royal Society of Chemistry Royal Society of Chemistry |
spellingShingle | Doyle, Patrick S. Hsiao, Lilian Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title | Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title_full | Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title_fullStr | Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title_full_unstemmed | Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title_short | Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
title_sort | celebrating soft matter s 10th anniversary sequential phase transitions in thermoresponsive nanoemulsions |
url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101168 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT doylepatricks celebratingsoftmatters10thanniversarysequentialphasetransitionsinthermoresponsivenanoemulsions AT hsiaolilian celebratingsoftmatters10thanniversarysequentialphasetransitionsinthermoresponsivenanoemulsions |