Core-shell-structured silica/polyacrylate particles prepared by Pickering emulsion: influence of the nucleation model on particle interfacial organization and emulsion stability

Abstract

This work reports a new evidence of the versatility of silica sol as a stabilizer for Pickering emulsions. The organization of silica particles at the oil-water interface is a function of the nucleation model. The present results show that nucleation model, together with monomer hydrophobicity, can be used as a trigger to modify the packing density of silica particles at the oil-water interface: Less hydrophobic methylmethacrylate, more wettable with silica particles, favors the formation of core-shell-structured composite when the composite particles are prepared by miniemulsion polymerization in which monomers are fed in batch (droplet nucleation). By contrast, hydrophobic butylacrylate promotes the encapsulating efficiency of silica when monomers are fed dropwise (homogeneous nucleation). The morphologies of polyacrylate-nano-SiO2 composites prepared from different feed ratio of methylmethacrylate/butylacrylate (with different hydrophobicity) and by different feed processes are characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. The results from SEM and TEM show that the morphologies of the as-prepared polyacrylate/nano-SiO2 composite can be a core-shell structure or a bare acrylic sphere. The stability of resulting emulsions composed of these composite particles is strongly dependent on the surface coverage of silica particles. The emulsion stability is improved by densely silica-packed composite particles.