Recent progress in emulsion gels: from fundamentals to applications

Abstract

Emulsion gels, also known as gelled emulsions or emulgels, have garnered great attention both in fundamental research and practical applications due to their superior stability, tunable morphology and microstructure, and promising mechanical and functional properties. From an application perspective, attention in this area has been, historically, mainly focused on food industries, e.g., engineering emulsion gels as fat substitutes or delivery systems for bioactive food ingredients. However, a growing body of studies has, in recent years, begun to demonstrate the full potential of emulsion gels as soft templates for designing advanced functional materials widely applied in a variety of fields, spanning chemical engineering, pharmaceutics, and materials science. Herein, a concise and comprehensive overview of emulsion gels is presented, from fundamentals to applications, highlighting significant recent progress and open questions, to scout for and deepen their potential applications in more fields.