Particle formation by emulsion inversion method: Effect of the stirring speed on inversion and formation of spherical particles

Phase inversion emulsification technique was employed in this work as a practical method to form epoxy particles. The effect of stirring speed on the inversion behaviour and the morphological aspects of the resulting solid epoxy particles are investigated. Emulsion inversion was induced by increasing the amount of initially dispersed deionized water in the presence of a non-ionic block copolymer surfactant at a fixed concentration. The process of inversion was followed by monitoring the variations in the rotational speed of the stirrer caused by the viscosity variations of the emulsifying system throughout the process. It was shown that the mixing speed plays an important role in controlling the size and size distribution of the resulting emulsion particles. Below a critical stirring speed, spherical particles could not be formed and the inversion process resulted in macroscopically non-homogeneous multi shape structures. Fully spherical particles were formed above this critical speed. Further increase in the rotational speed of the mixer, significantly reduced the size of these spherical particles with a wide and random size distributions controlled and considerably narrowed by the stirring speed. Dynamic light scattering analysis and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the particle size and size distributions, in addition, study of the rotational speed variations of the stirrer, which is directly related to the viscosity changes of the emulsifying system, revealed that a correlation between the physical aspects of the inversion behaviour and the viscosity changes during the emulsion inversion process could be established.