Hello, I am currently conducting an experiment that involves oil in water emulsions. I have read various literature regarding the creation of microemulsions by bringing the solution of water oil and a non ionic surfactant to the phase inversion temperature (where the cpp=1), and then quickly cooling the solution (i used an ice water bath). Unfortunate this does not create a microemulsion but produces a normal macroemulsion. I was wondering if there was something I was missing.
Thank you for any help.
I'm not sure that I understand the question. But if you want to create a micro-emulsion why not just to use ultrasound?
Another thing which I can say, is that looking at the picture it is probably the method to create a dense emulsion, is it? Are you sure that you start cooling form a dense lamellae or bicontiniuous phase as described in the picture?
If there is macrophase separation occurs after cooling then there is probably not enough surfactant or the volume of oil and water is not the same.
I also would like to say that if to be picky the picture is not very correct in that it shows that the size of the head group changes with temperature. I would expect that when you heat your system "effective size" of tail increases because free energy input of conformational entropy increases, it does not want to be densely packed any more. As you decrease temperature, the opposite thing happens.
Specify surfactans used and quantity, composition of oily phase and PIT used
Then maybe I could make a guess...
Hello,I think temperature is not enough for oil in water mic. please adjust temperature range.
There are too many factors influencing the formulation of nano/micro-emulsion. And there is a lot of confusion about this topic. The process that you show on the image is mainly associated to microemulsion and not to nanoemulsion. I recommend you to read Anton, N., & Vandamme, T. F. (2010). Nano-emulsions and Micro-emulsions: Clarifications of the Critical Differences. Pharmaceutical Research, 28(5), 978–985. doi:10.1007/s11095-010-0309-1
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