Stabilization Ostwald ripening

TBP and injected into a hot ( 350 °C) solution of TOPO (12 g). The injection of CdSe precursors into the hot solution ofTOPO resulted in spontaneous nucleation of CdSe nanocrystals and a decrease in temperature. Once the temperature was stabilized, an additional amount (0.4 mL) of the precursor solution was added for the growth of the nucleated nanocrystals. Here, Ostwald ripening was avoided by separating the nucleation and growth processes. All the reagents and the reaction were kept under an Ar atmosphere to avoid fire hazard and surface oxidation of the nanocrystals. 

Stability" is a ubiqitous word as applied to colloidal dispersions it may apply to more than one physical process (e.g. flocculation, settling, Ostwald ripening) and may be used in either the kinetic or thermodynamic senses. We restrict discussion here to flocculation and consider first the thermodynamic aspects. 

Chemical anchoring of catalytically active metal clusters onto a support is of practical importance to stabilize catalysts against loss of activity by Ostwald ripening, i.e. metal agglomeration. Documented examples include Pt, Pd, or Rh supported on acidic oxides, in particular zeolites in their H-form. Three types of anchors have been de-... 

A.S. Kabalnov, A.V. Pertsov and E.D. Shchukin Ostwald Ripening in Two-Component Disperse Phase Systems Application to Emulsion Stability. Colloid Surfaces 24, 19 (1987). 

However, there are a number of difficulties associated with the synthesis of colloidal semiconductor particles. The preparation of stable, monodispersed, well-characterized populations of nanosized, colloidal semiconductor particles is experimentally demanding and intellectually challenging. Small and uniform particles are needed to diminish non-productive electron-hole recombinations the mean distance by which the charge carriers need to diffuse to reach the particle surface from which they are released is necessarily reduced in small particles. Monodispersity is a requirement for the observation of many of the spectroscopic and electro-optical manifestations of size quantization in semiconductor particles. Small semiconductor particles are difficult to maintain in solution in the absence of stabilizers flocculations and Ostwald ripening... 

Surfactants are used for stabilization of emulsions and suspensions against flocculation, Ostwald ripening, and coalescence. Flocculation of emulsions and suspensions may occur as a result of van der Waals attraction, unless a repulsive energy is created to prevent the close approach of droplets or particles. The van der Waals attraction Ga between two spherical droplets or particles with radius R and surface-to-surface separation h is given by the Hamaker equation,... 

Since most drags are insoluble in the propellants, they are usually presented as suspensions. Micronized drag is dispersed with the aid of a surfactant such as oleic acid, sorbitan trioleate or lecithin. At concentrations up to 2% w/w the surfactant stabilizes the suspended particles by adsorption at the drag propellant interface and in addition serves as a valve lubricant. The tendency is to use minimum surfac—tant concentrations to reduce drag solubility within the propellant by solubilization (to reduce Ostwald ripening during the shelf life of the pMDI). Low surfactant concentrations will also avoid substantial reductions in the propellant evaporation rates from aerosolized drops. 

Emulsion Stability Against Ostwald Ripening, Collisions,... 

Emulsions are understood as dispersed systems with liquid droplets (dispersed phase) in another, non-miscible liquid (continuous phase). Either molecular diffusion degradation (Ostwald ripening) or coalescence may lead to destabilization and breaking of emulsions. In order to create a stable emulsion of very small droplets, which is, for historical reasons, called a miniemulsion (as proposed by Chou et al. [2]), the droplets must be stabilized against molecular diffusion degradation (Ostwald ripening, a unimolecular process or r, mechanism) and... 

In 1962, Higuchi and Misra examined the quantitative aspects of the rate of growth of the large droplets and the rate of dissolution of the small droplets in emulsion for the case in which the process is diffusion controlled in the continuous phase [4]. It was proposed that unstable emulsions may be stabilized with respect to the Ostwald ripening process by the addition of small amounts of a third component, which must distribute preferentially in the dispersed phase [4]. The obtained stability in miniemulsions is said in the literature to be metastable or fully stable. The stabilization effect by adding a third component was recently theoretically described by Webster and Cates [5]. The authors considered an emulsion whose droplets contain a trapped species, which is insoluble in the continuous phase, and studied the emulsion s stability via the Lifshitz-Slyozov dynamics (Ostwald ripening). 

The rate of Ostwald ripening depends on the size, the polydispersity, and the solubility of the dispersed phase in the continuous phase. This means that a hydrophobic oil dispersed as small droplets with a low polydispersity already shows slow net mass exchange, but by adding an ultrahydrophobe , the stability can still be increased by additionally building up a counteracting osmotic pressure. This was shown for fluorocarbon emulsions, which were based on perfluo-rodecaline droplets stabilized by lecithin. By adding a still less soluble species, e.g., perfluorodimorphinopropane, the droplets stability was increased and could be introduced as stable blood substitutes [6,7]. 

In miniemulsion polymerization the nucleation of the particles mainly starts in the monomer droplets themselves. Therefore, the stability of droplets is a crucial factor in order to obtain droplet nucleation. The better the droplets are stabilized against Ostwald ripening, the higher is the droplet nucleation. 

Stability of emulsions refers to the resistance to the formation of two separate phases [13,14]. Coalescence of the droplets is responsible for the phase separation. Ostwald ripening constitutes an additional mechanism by which the large droplets grow in size at the expense of the smaller ones, which decrease in size. 

Mouran et al. [105] polymerized miniemulsions of methyl methacrylate with sodium lauryl sulfate as the surfactant and dodecyl mercaptan (DDM) as the costabilizer. The emulsions were of a droplet size range common to miniemulsions and exhibited long-term stability (of greater than three months). Results indicate that DDM retards Ostwald ripening and allows the production of stable miniemulsions. When these emulsions were initiated, particle formation occurred predominantly via monomer droplet nucleation. The rate of polymerization, monomer droplet size, polymer particle size, molecular weight of the polymer, and the effect of initiator concentration on the number of particles all varied systematically in ways that indicated predominant droplet nucleation. 

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