Particle-Stabilized Emulsions: Relating contact angle to hydrophobicity using water freezing temperature and diffusion coefficient values.

Many foods are emulsions that have very large interfacial areas between oil and water, and subsequently prone to chemical deterioration caused by oxidation. Therefore, new technologies with optimal design of the oil-water interface are crucial to ensure optimal food processing, quality and safety. Pickering-stabilized micro-antibubbles can be produced by first making a particle-stabilized water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) emulsion and then remove the water and oil by freeze-drying the W/O/W emulsion. It is well known that the structure of water is perturbed heavily near surfaces which have the potential to affect water diffusion. There is a clear relationship between the variation of the diffusion coefficient Dt and surface wettability. By using quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS), we will obtain information about proton self-diffusion, while inelastic neutron scattering (INS) will be used to gather knowledge of collective density fluctuations. Combining these results will allow us to predict the wettability and give an insight on the water’s adhesion energy on Pickering-stabilized micro-antibubbles where the water contact angle cannot be measured.