Janus Emulsions of Bertholletia Excelsa Oil and Silicone Oil

Special Article - Micro Fluidics

Austin J Anal Pharm Chem. 2015;2(3): 1041.

Janus Emulsions of Bertholletia Excelsa Oil and Silicone Oil

Leonardi GR1,2, Silva MM¹, Monteiro e Silva SA², Perrechil FA¹ and Friberg SE³*

1Institute for Environmental, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Federal University of São Paulo, UNIFESP, Diadema, Brazil

2Medicine Department - Federal University of São Paulo – UNIFESP, São Paulo, Brazil

3Ugelstad Laboratory, NTNU, Norway

*Corresponding author: Friberg SE, Ugelstad Laboratory, USA.

Received: April 12, 2015; Accepted: May 04, 2015; Published: May 05, 2015

Abstract

Janus emulsions of Bertholletia Excelsa oil and silicone oil in water were prepared in batch by high energy emulsification and their destabilization studied by observing the creaming and final separation of the two oils. The creaming was shown to be characteristic of a flocculated emulsion in accordance with the optical microscope image of a concentrated emulsion, but with few drop-drop contacts. During the creaming process the Janus drops suffered coalescence, but retained the Janus topology till the final stage after more than a month of storage, at which time the two oils set off separation into two bulk liquids. The unexpected stability of the topology per se indicated a more general importance of Janus emulsions than hitherto recognized and prompted a calculation to compare the relative free energy reduction during the coalescence versus the increase during the separation of the two oils. The latter energy change was significantly superior and was concluded to be an essential factor for the stability of the Janus topology.

Keywords: Emulsions; Janus topology; Coalescence free energy; Interfacial free energy; Cerberus emulsions

Introduction

Among the many emulsion varieties [1], multiple emulsions [2, 3] early found wide spread applications [4] within foods [5], drugs and cosmetics [6]. One reason for the interest in double emulsions rests with the potential to combine beneficial properties of different oils, e.g. improving the feel of cosmetics by adding silicon oil to vegetable oil formulations [7,8]. Amongst other benefits may be mentioned taking advantage of the separate compartment structure by isolating mutually sensitive compounds or reducing the dissolution rate of specific compounds [9]. The formulation of double emulsions was for a long time focusing on solving the stability problems [3,10,11]: a focus that was meaningfully altered with the introduction of the microfluidics method [12] with its subsequent novel applications [13,14].

In the microfluidics process Janus emulsions and more complex formulations were prepared [15,16] under conditions close to equilibrium. As a consequence, the correlation between the drop topology and the interfacial thermodynamics at the contact line became of interest with several comprehensive investigations [17,18,19,20]. With the fundamentals clarified as well as a large number of advanced applications introduced, the framework for the field appeared defined and the future development predictable, taking into consideration the limitation to small volumes of the microfluidics method.

However, recent publications [21,22,23] appear to substantially enlarge the field of Janus emulsion applications. It was shown that well defined Janus emulsions could also be prepared in a batch process, allowing Janus emulsion applications also into the commodities area [24]. The discovery prompted extended thermodynamic investigations into Janus emulsion topology, revealing a selective inversion of a Janus drop to change the Janus emulsion of a vegetable oil/silicone (VO/SO) oil in an aqueous solution from the original (SO + VO)/W to an (SO + W)/VO configuration [25,26,27].

With these recent developments, the potential appears realistic for an extension of the Janus emulsion concept also into personal care and pharmaceutical formulations and with this contribution the authors introduce a Janus emulsion of silicone oil (SO) with a Brazilian vegetable oil from Bertholletia Excelsa. This oil has, as many other vegetable oils from Brazil, a number of beneficial properties [28,29,30] and the authors felt the need for an introductory investigation into the fundamentals of preparing Janus emulsions from a selected Brazilian vegetable oil combined with a silicone. The results indicate a more wide spread importance of Janus emulsions and with this contribution we introduce the basic conditions for such an emulsion, built on a silicone oil and the vegetable oil from Bertholletia Excelsa.

Experimental Materials

The materials used to prepare the systems were polydimethylsiloxane polymer, 100 centistokes (silicone fluid Xiameter® PMX-200), SO, kindly donated by Dow Corning (USA), Bertholletia Excelsa oil, VO, kindly donated by MAPRIC (Brazil), polyoxyethylene sorbitan monooleate (Tween 80) acquired from Synth (Brazil), and distilled water.

Janus emulsion preparation

Janus emulsions were prepared by first mixing vegetable oil (VO) and, silicone oil (SO). To this mixture was gradually added an aqueous phase with Tween 80 (Aq) to form the final composition in weight fractions, VO 0.08, SO 0.32, Tween 80 0.06 and water 0.54. The emulsions were mixed for 5 min on Vortex Mixer AP 56 (Phoenix Luferco, Brazil). The test tubes were sealed with a plastic cap to avoid water evaporation.

Microscopy

Aliquots of each sample were removed for microscopy observation and photographs were recorded until 40 days. A small sample of each emulsion placed on a microscopy slide, Bioslide, 26 × 76 mm, one set under a cover glass, 18 × 18 mm and a second group observed without cover in an optical microscope model Primo Star (Zeiss, Germany) with a yellow coded objective EPIPLAN 10×/0.2.

Results

The outcome of the experiments on the emulsions of a composition according the section 2.2, will be presented in the following order. The first section follows the creaming of the emulsions by photos of the emulsion test tubes versus time and, secondly, optical microscopy images are shown of the emulsions. The optical microscopy images offer direct information about the essential aspect of the Janus emulsions, the topology of the drops. However, the value of such material is limited without knowledge about the emulsion “stability”, i.e. the rate of creaming and flocculation/ coalescence and a qualitative account of the creaming process will first be given, Figure 1.