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Soft Matter

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Soft Matter, 2009, 5, 1994 - 1999, DOI: 10.1039/b814395a

Stable soap and water sponges doped with metal nanoparticles

Anil V. Gaikwad, Peter Verschuren, Tibert van der Loop, Gadi Rothenberg and Erika Eiser

This paper presents various aspects of surfactant/oil/water L3 phases. Although these so-called sponge phases are usually stable only within a narrow temperature range, we show here that they can be stabilized over a larger phase space by doping with metal nanoparticle suspensions. We make and study sponge-phase samples doped with Au, Ag, and Pd aquasols and organosols. Remarkably, Pd-doped sponge phases are stable up to temperatures as high as 50 °C. Polarised microscopy studies as well as small-angle X-ray scattering measurements (SAXS) confirm that the nanoparticles are indeed incorporated in the sponge phase membrane. Moreover, rheological measurements show that, unlike the undoped samples, metal-doped sponge phases exhibit reversible phase transitions under shear stress. The various factors that control the stability and special optical properties of these metal-doped sponge phases are outlined and discussed.

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