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Emulsion Destabilisation by mechanical stress
- Supervisor: Prof. dr. Daniel Bonn
- Research Team: Antoine Deblais, Maureen Dinkgreve
- Goal: To investigate the critical mechanical stress leading to the destabilization of an emulsion
- Info: A.Deblais, M.Dinkgreve
Emulsions have considerable industrial importance in a broad range of applications ranging from food processing to cosmetics. They may be desirable with long stability periods, but they may also be undesirable and their destruction is sought. Many factors control the stability or instability of emulsions. In a recent paper, the stability of model oil-in-water emulsions have been tested under the mechanical action of a blade (blade coating). In certain conditions of spreading, the emulsion becomes unstable and the destabilization leads to the total inversion of the system on the substrate. However, the origin of the destabilization is still unclear, involving a possible drying front during the spreading or a critical stress imposed by the meniscus. We propose to investigate the latter case, by squeezing a model emulsion thanks to an original setup which is using a rheometer assembled on a confocal microscope.