Using SANS to understand the structure and behaviour of surfactants in 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 learn about the way in which these surfactant molecules aggregate in oil in an effort to understand how they lubricate the sugar grains and hence make nicer, healthier and cheaper chocolate.