Surfactant compositional ripening

Pena, A.A. and Miller, C.A., Kinetics of compositional ripening in emulsions stabilized by nonionic surfactants, J. Colloid Interface ScL, 244, 154, 2001. 

In the pharmaceutical industry, it is common to immediately suspend a portion of sample in solutions of a small-molecule surfactant. The surfactant is expected to rapidly adsorb at incompletely covered droplet surfaces to prevent droplet coalescence between sample withdrawal and analysis of droplet size or concentration. However, the addition of small surfactant molecules can result in a displacement of the original emulsifier from the droplet interface and profoundly alter droplet-droplet interactions. Changes in system composition may therefore lead to greater errors than those generated by the lag between sample withdrawal and analysis (see Background Information, discussion ofOstwald ripening). 

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