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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Main Authors: Doyle, Patrick S., Hsiao, Lilian
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Royal Society of Chemistry 2016
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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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