Kinetically induced ordering in gelation of emulsions

Abstract

We report the formulation of a solid gel network from purely liquid emulsion droplets. The gel remains rigid at droplet volume fractions as low as ${10}^{\mathrm{-}3}$. The gelation process is identified as diffusion-limited cluster aggregation. We find a surprising order in the gel structure. This ordering is induced by the aggregation kinetics, which result in an unexpected spatial correlation between the growing clusters, ensuring that the network is formed from clusters of nearly equal size and spacing.