Effect of Commercial Surfactants on Hase Separation of Liquid Mixtures

Author(s): Filomena Califano, Gabriele Lamonaca

In the work presented here, we have investigated whether the presence surfactants has any influence on the linear growth of the single-phase domains. We expected that coalescence could eventually be retarded by increasing the concentration of surfactants in the mixtures. Therefore we determined the thresholds of the surfactant concentration beyond which the separation process starts to slow down significantly. Our results indicate that surfactant presence does not affect the early stage of separation, only when droplets reach their critical size, it slows down the complete separation.

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