Understanding the Stabilisation Mechanism of Light-Responsive Pickering Emulsions

This work aims to understand the mode-of-action of an emergent class of stimuli-responsive materials – Light-responsive Pickering emulsions. These are mixtures of oil and water where the oil is dispersed as droplets throughout the water and the boundary is stabilised by light-responsive solid particles. When UV light is shone on the particles, the droplets disperse, releasing their contents. This can be exploited for the delivery of drugs in the body, the separation of oil from water and the recovery of catalysts in industrial reactions. How the droplets disperse, however, is not well understood. Using spin-echo small angle neutron scattering, we aim to track changes in how the particles pack at the oil-water boundary during the destabilisation with UV light. This will allow us to tune the properties of the emulsions to better suit the varied requirements of the above applications.