Using SANS to understand the structural basis for the rheology of molten chocolate

Molten chocolate is a semi-solid suspension of (mostly) sugar, but also cocoa and milk solids in oil. In order to allow the sugar grains to flow past each other, either when the chocolate is being made, or when it has melted in your mouth, it also contains additives known as surfactants. These are mostly naturally occuring products, such as lecithin, which is comprises lipids which are found at surfaces in nature, but also some polymeric molecules such as PGPR. We will use the technique of small angle neutron scattering to gain the structural information to test a model we have derived using polymer physics to explain how they lubricate the sugar grains and hence make nicer, healthier and cheaper chocolate.