Spontaneous deformation and fission of oil droplets on an aqueous surfactant solution.

We investigated the spontaneous deformation and fission of a tetradecane droplet containing palmitic acid (PA) on a stearyltrimethylammonium chloride (STAC) aqueous solution. In this system, the generation and rupture of the gel layer composed of PA and STAC induce the droplet deformation and fission. To investigate the characteristics of the droplet-fission dynamics, we obtained the time series of the number of the droplets produced by fission and confirmed that the number has a peak at a certain STAC concentration.