Field-Induced Breakup of Emulsion Droplets Stabilized by Colloidal Particles

Abstract

We simulate the response of a particle-stabilized emulsion droplet in an external force field, such as gravity, acting equally on all $N$ particles. We show that the field strength required for breakup (at fixed initial area fraction) decreases markedly with droplet size, because the forces act cumulatively, not individually, to detach the interfacial particles. The breakup mode involves the collective destabilization of a solidified particle raft occupying the lower part of the droplet, leading to a critical force per particle that scales approximately as $N^{-1/2}$.

4 pages, plus 3 pages of supplementary material

References in corpus (4)

• Colloidal Jamming at Interfaces: a Route to Fluid-bicontinuous Gels
• Force balance of particles trapped at fluid interfaces
• Bijels Containing Magnetic Particles: A Simulation Study
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Size limit for particle-stabilized emulsion droplets under gravity