Effect of polymer-surfactant association on colloidal force

We investigate the forces between emulsion droplets in the presence of neutral polymer-surfactant complexes. The polymer used in our experiment was statistical copolymer of polyvinyl alcohol. The anionic surfactant used is sodiumdodecyl sulphate, the cationic surfactants are cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and tetradecyltrimethylammonium bromide, and the nonionic surfactant is nonylphenol ethoxylate (NP10). It has been found that the force profiles in the presence of surfactant-polymer complexes follow an exponential scaling with a characteristic decay length, close to the radius of gyration of the polymer alone. A continuous increase in the onset of repulsion is observed in the case of all three ionic surfactants, whereas no such variation was noticed in the case of nonionic surfactant, NP10. The experimental observations suggest that in the presence of charged surfactant molecules or micelles, the neutral polymer chain at the interface is converted into partial polyelectrolytes, where the charges on the chain repel each other and the electrostatic repulsion collectively leads to chain stretching. These results suggest that the associative polymers can be potential candidates for making the emulsions stable for a sufficiently long period.