Amphiphilicity evolution in self-assembled carbon-based nanostructures for stabilizing different types of Pickering emulsions

ABSTRACT

Carbon-based nanostructures have been firmly established as highly scalable and versatile platforms, which have found extensive applications in several fields of multifunctional nanocomposites, energy storage, environment protection, and electronics device. Pickering emulsion template method is one of the efficient strategies for assembling metastable carbon nanomaterials into stable macroarchitectures. Here, the combination of graphene oxide (GO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was chemically and continuously treated with 2-ethyl-4-methylimidazole (EMI) to acquire tunable wettability. The hybridization of CNTs and reduction of GO can make the as-synthesized carbon nanohybrids be capable of stabilizing oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil (W/O) Pickering emulsions, respectively. The major shift in the type of Pickering emulsion is conveniently implemented through the catalytic reduction of GO by EMI. The sp²-hybridized carbon networks self-assembled with CNTs and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) are intentionally located at the biphasic liquid interface of different types of Pickering emulsions, which can endow the architecture elaborated from Pickering emulsion strategy with multiple functionalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Pickering emulsion
• carbon nanostructures
• amphiphilicity
• self-assembly
• catalytic reduction

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the financial supports of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50703024 and 51373102).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [50703024, 51373102].