Eur. Phys. J. E (2005) 18: 417-423
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/e2005-00053-6

Regular Articles

Stability of cellulose lyotropic liquid crystal emulsions

¹ Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK
² Corporate Research, Unilever R&D, Colworth House, Sharnbrook, Bedford, MK44 1LQ, UK

Received: 18 August 2005
Published online: 13 December 2005

Abstract

We studied a new kind of W/O emulsions based on a lyotropic liquid crystal as the aqueous droplet phase. The cholesteric phase, a solution hydroxypropyl cellulose in water was dispersed in the continuous oil matrix, paraffin oil or heptane. We made a specific choice of surfactant in order to impose director anchoring conditions at the oil-water interface and orient the liquid crystal inside the droplet. The strong anchoring conditions resulted in a topological defect inside the droplets of size above the critical value R^*. The defect elastic energy creates a barrier against droplet coalescence, the effect of topological size selection. We have studied the orientation of the director inside the droplets and their size distribution.