6 pagesInternational audienceUltrastable foams with an optimal foamability have been obtained using hydroxyl fatty acids tubes. The stabilization results from the adsorption of monomers at the air-water interface preventing coalescence and coarsening and from the presence of tubes in the Plateau borders limiting the drainage. Upon heating, tubes transit to micelles, which induces foam destabilization. Such foams are thus the first to have a temperature tunable stability
Ultrastabile Schäume mit optimaler Schäumbarkeit sind mithilfe von Hydroxyfettsäure‐Röhren zugänglich (siehe Bild). Die Stabilisierung ist die Folge der Adsorption von Monomeren an der Luft‐Wasser‐Grenzfläche und dem Vorliegen von Röhren in den Plateau‐Grenzen. Beim Erwärmen gehen die Röhren in Micellen über, was zur Schaumdestabilisierung und damit zu den ersten Schäumen mit temperaturgesteuerter Schäumbarkeit führt.
The most common types of liquid foams are aqueous ones, and correspond to gas bubbles dispersed in an aqueous liquid phase. Non-aqueous foams are also composed of gas bubbles, but dispersed in a non-aqueous solvent. In the literature, articles on such non-aqueous foams are scarce; however, the study of these foams has recently emerged, especially because of their potential use as low calories food products and of their increasing importance in various other industries (such as, for instance, the petroleum industry). Non-aqueous foams can be based on three different foam stabilizers categories: specialty surfactants, solid particles and crystalline particles. In this review, we only focus on recent advances explaining how solid and crystalline particles can lead to the formation of non-aqueous foams, and stabilize them. In fact, as discussed here, the foaming is both driven by the physical properties of the liquid phase and by the interactions between the foam stabilizer and this liquid phase. Therefore, for a given stabilizer, different foaming and stability behavior can be found when the solvent is varied. This is different from aqueous systems for which the foaming properties are only set by the foam stabilizer. We also highlight how these non-aqueous foams systems can easily become responsive to temperature changes or by the application of light.
Oil foams are composed of gas bubbles dispersed in an oil phase. These systems are scarcely studied despite their great potential in diverse fields such as the food and cosmetic industries. Contrary to aqueous foams, the production of oil foams is difficult to achieve due to the inefficiency of surfactant adsorption at oil-air interfaces. Herein, we report a simple way to produce oil foams from oleogels, whose liquid phase is a mixture of sunflower oil and fatty alcohols. The temperature at which the oleogel formed was found to depend on both fatty alcohol chain length and concentration. The air bubbles in the oleogel foam were stabilized by fatty alcohol crystals. Below the melting temperature of the crystals, oleogel foams were stable for months. Upon heating, these ultrastable foams collapsed within a few minutes due to the melting of the crystal particles. The transition between crystal formation and melting was reversible, leading to thermoresponsive nonaqueous foams. The reversible switching between ultrastable and unstable foam depended solely on the temperature of the system. We demonstrate that these oleogel foams can be made to be photoresponsive by using internal heat sources such as carbon black particles, which can absorb UV light and dissipate the absorbed energy as heat. This simple approach for the formulation of responsive oil foams could be easily extended to other oleogel systems and could find a broad range of applications due to the availability of the components in large quantities and at low cost.
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