Cleavable surfactants to tune the stability of W/O miniemulsions.

Recently, there has been growing interest towards the formation and use of miniemulsions as nanoreactors for polymerization and precipitation reactions. Regarding precipitation reactions in miniemulsions, emulsifiers are required that on the one hand stabilize droplets in a size range <1 μm and on the other hand allow break-up of the miniemulsion into its two initial phases after particle synthesis for purification reasons. In this work we report the synthesis and emulsifying abilities of low-mass cleavable emulsifiers based on monoesters of oxalic and malonic acids for the stabilization of water-in-oil miniemulsions.