Tuning electrostatic interactions of colloidal particles at oil-water interfaces with organic salts

Abstract

Monolayers of colloidal particles at oil-water interfaces readily crystalize owing to electrostatic repulsion, which is often mediated through the oil. However, little attempts exist to control it using oil-soluble electrolytes. We probe the interactions amongst charged hydrophobic micospheres confined at a water/hexadecane interface and show that repulsion can be continuously tuned over orders of magnitude upon introducing minor amounts of an organic salt into the oil. Our results show that charged groups at the particle/oil interface are subject to an associative discharging mechanism, analogous to the charge regulation kinetics observed for charged colloids in non-polar solvents.