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A recent breakthrough study by Nannette and team from leading scientific journal, ‘Science’, defies traditional chemistry knowledge, proving that water may stabilize in oil without surfactants. The researchers’ findings introduce a fundamental shift in our understanding of how dissimilar compounds like oil and water behave.
The norm has always been that unlike compounds, such as oil and water, cannot mix without the help of a third component, typically a surfactant. This agent breaks down the interfaces and allows droplets of one medium to be stabilized within the other. However, this paradigm-shifting study reveals an exception to this behavior.
The team discovered that when a thin layer of polymeric oil absorbs onto the water droplets’ surface, it stabilizes the droplets and creates a weak attraction between them. This anomalous interaction prevents coalescence over periods extending to several weeks, all without the help of surfactants or solvents.
On the microscopic level, when two droplets of liquid approach each other, the thin film that separates them becomes inherently unstable, leading to their combining. The traditional way to avoid this instability would be to add a third component, usually a surfactant. Nannette and team are the first to report that an adhesive interaction can occur between two water droplets separated simply by a thin oil film.
For an in-depth understanding of the phenomena observed, the researchers conducted temperature-dependent measurements, emulsion fabrications, and droplet size distribution evaluations. They also employed advanced techniques such as 1H NMR relaxometry and micropipette aspiration for specialized analyses.
This groundbreaking study does not only contribute significantly to our understanding of basic chemical interactions but could also pave the way for innovations in multiple industrial domains, from food processing and cosmetics to waste management and oil recovery.
Information Box:
– Basic chemistry has always maintained that oil and water cannot mix without the help of a surfactant.
– A groundbreaking study conducted by Nannette and her team from ‘Science’ challenges this old belief.
– This study found that water can stabilize in oil with just a thin layer of oil helping in stabilization.
– This anomaly was observed to prevent coalescence of the water droplets over periods spanning numerous weeks.
– This breakthrough research could revolutionize applications across different industries like food processing, cosmetics, waste management, and oil recovery.
References:
Reference 1: Nannette, C., Baudry, J., Chen, A., Song, Y., Shgelabow, A., Bremond, N., Démoûlin, D, Walters, J., Weitz, D. & Bibette, J. (2024). Thin adhesive oil films lead to anomalously stable mixtures of water in oil, Science, 384, 209-213.
Reference 2: https://www.science.org/content/article/thin-adhesive-oil-films-lead-anomalously-stable-w-o-mixtures