Alcohol-doping-controlled interfacial freezing of buried oil-water interfaces

Spherical-to-polyhedral shape transitions of liquid emulsion droplets have recently attracted a broad research interest, due to their importance for fundamental physics, bio-morphogenesis, and broad range of potential technological applications. Our recent microscopy studies demonstrate that doping the droplets by long-chain alcohols allows an unprecedented controllability of their transition temperatures, highly important for applications. Yet, the mechanism of this effect is currently unknown. Modelling the droplets’ interfaces by a planar alcohol-doped alkane:water interface we offer to study its structure by x-ray reflectivity, for several alcohol:alkane:surfactant combinations. The resolved structure should allow the role of alcohols in these systems to be elucidated, opening new routes towards technological applications, and shedding light onto the mechanisms of this intriguing droplet morphogenesis.