Wednesday, February 27, 2013

1302.6306 (Guo Chen et al.)

Coalescence of Pickering emulsion droplets induced by an electric field    [PDF]

Guo Chen, Peng Tan, Shuyu Chen, Jiping Huang, Weijia Wen, Lei Xu
Combining high-speed photography with electric current measurement, we investigate the electrocoalescence of Pickering emulsion droplets. Under high enough electric field, the originally-stable droplets coalesce via two distinct approaches: normal coalescence and abnormal coalescence. In the normal coalescence, a liquid bridge grows continuously and merges two droplets together, similar to the classical picture. In the abnormal coalescence, however, the bridge fails to grow indefinitely; instead it breaks up spontaneously due to the geometric constraint from particle shells. Such connecting-then-breaking cycles repeat multiple times, until a stable connection is established. In depth analysis indicates that the defect size in particle shells determines the exact merging behaviors: when the defect size is larger than a critical size around the particle diameter, normal coalescence will show up; while abnormal coalescence will appear for coatings with smaller defects.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6306

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