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Wetting dynamics

Adsorbed colloids relax slowly

Nature Materials volume 11, pages 99–100 (2012)Cite this article

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For colloidal particles adsorbed at liquid/liquid interfaces, it is now found that the height of a particle above the interface equilibrates much more slowly than expected. Such a slow relaxation has major implications for the understanding of effective interactions between colloids at fluid interfaces.

In a quiescent dispersion consisting of two immiscible liquids and colloidal particles with similar affinity for both liquids, the particles strongly bind to the interface. The reason for this is simple: particles sitting at the interface reduce the contact area between the two liquids, and thus the interfacial energy. Because such a binding force is usually orders of magnitude larger than the Brownian forces that cause the particles to jiggle, it has long been assumed that the particles quickly reach their equilibrium height above the interface. This assumption is now shown to be inaccurate. Writing in Nature Materials, Kaz and colleagues show that the relaxation of polystyrene microparticles after breaching a water/oil interface is logarithmic in time, which implies that the particles may take months to reach their equilibrium position1.

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Figure 1: Slow relaxation of colloidal particles adsorbed at a liquid/liquid interface.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ignacio Pagonabarraga is at the Departament de Física Fonamental, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain,

    Ignacio Pagonabarraga

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  1. Ignacio Pagonabarraga
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Correspondence to Ignacio Pagonabarraga.

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Pagonabarraga, I. Adsorbed colloids relax slowly. Nature Mater 11, 99–100 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3235

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