seed projects

Lynn Walker, Cari Dutcher, Mahesh Mahanthappa: High Internal Phase Emulsions (HIPE) Stabilized by Macromolecular Surfactants

Schematic illustrating bottlebrush amphiphiles stabilizing high internal phase oil-in-water emulsions. Blue depicts a polar phase and yellow a non-polar phase.

This Seed will develop a class of macromolecular amphiphiles to stabilize high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs). Currently, HIPEs are stabilized either with large amounts of small molecule surfactants which are often costly and not readily recovered, or nanoparticles which require dispersion of a solid phase. Inspired by research in current IRG-2, we hypothesize that bottle-brush amphiphiles will provide appropriate surface activity and packing at the fluid-fluid interfaces to enable a new class of stabilizers. These will have the advantage of requiring low levels of additive; due to irreversible adsorption and imparting interfacial elasticity. As macromolecules, these amphiphiles allow for a wide range of potential chemistries providing new levels of degradation, functionality, and initiation sites for polymerization in HIPEs.

Funded by the National Science Foundation through the University of Minnesota MRSEC under Award Number DMR-2011401