Liquid Droplet Coalescence and Fragmentation at the Aqueous–Air Surface

For hexadecane oil droplets at an aqueous–air surface, the surface film in coexistence with the droplets exhibits two-dimensional gaseous (G), liquid (L), or solid (S) behavior depending upon the temperature and concentration of the cationic surfactant dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide. In the G (L) phase, oil droplets are observed to coalesce (fragment) as a function of time. In the coalescence region, droplets coalesce on all length scales, and the final state is a single oil droplet at the aqueous–air surface. The fragmentation regime is complex. Large oil droplets spread as oil films; hole nucleation breaks up this film into much smaller fluctuating and fragmenting or metastable droplets. Metastable droplets are small contact angle spherical caps and do not fluctuate in time; however, they are unstable over long time periods and eventually sink into the bulk water phase. Buoyancy forces provide a counterbalancing force where the net result is that small oil droplets (radius r < 80 μm) are mostly submer...