Evolution of droplet size in nonaqueous emulsions using time-resolved, time-of-flight SESANS

Emulsions consist of two immiscible fluids (most often water and oil), where one can be dispersed in the other. In addition to mixing water and oil, there is considerable interest in understanding emulsification of immiscible nonaqueous fluids (oil-in-oil emulsions), which have many applications. Techniques that can measure the droplet size over relevant length scales are required. Spin-echo SANS (SESANS) is a scattering technique suited for this purpose, due to its sensitivity to large (µm) length scales and its tolerance of large amounts of scattering. In this experiment, time-resolved measurements will be performed that will reveal the evolution of the particle size of nonaqueous emulsion droplets, using time-of-flight SESANS, a technique available on the Larmor instrument at ISIS that can measure scattering over a wide range of length scales simultaneously.