Nanostructured, Fluid-Bicontinuous Gels for Continuous-Flow Liquid-Liquid Extraction.

Fluid-bicontinuous gels are unique materials that allow two distinct fluids to interact through a percolating, rigid scaffold. Current restrictions for their use are the large fluid-channel sizes (>5 µm), limiting the fluid-fluid interaction surface-area, and the inability to flow liquids through the channels. In this work a scalable synthesis route of nanoparticle stabilized fluid-bicontinuous gels with channels sizes below 500 nm and specific surface areas of 2 m cm is introduced.

Are Langmuir Trough Studies Useful? Unexpected Emulsification Behavior Using Colloidal Rods.

While studies carried out in a Langmuir trough have rigorously demonstrated that, at high surface pressure, ellipsoidal particles do flip and spherocylinders (rods) can flip, much less is known about the practical situation on the surface of a droplet or bubble. We present emulsification studies using colloidal rods and find that the droplets are bridged by the rods independent of shear rate and particle concentration and are only weakly dependent on the pH of the continuous phase. In a trough, it is the low aspect ratio rods which flip and the high aspect ratio rods which form bilayers; on the surface of a droplet we found that the high aspect ratio rods always bridge whereas the shorter rods show random bridging behavior.

Autonomous analysis to identify bijels from two-dimensional images.

Bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels (bijels) are novel composite materials that can be challenging to manufacture. As a step towards automating production, we have developed a machine learning tool to classify fabrication attempts. We use training and testing data in the form of confocal images from both successful and unsuccessful attempts at bijel fabrication.

Rheological Behavior and in Situ Confocal Imaging of Bijels Made by Mixing.

Bijels (bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels) have the potential to be useful in many different applications due to their internal connectivity and the possibility of efficient mass transport through the channels. Recently, new methods of making the bijel have been proposed, which simplify the fabrication process, making commercial application more realistic. Here, we study the flow properties of bijels prepared by mixing alone using oscillatory rheology combined with confocal microscopy and also squeezing flow experiments.