Phase Behavior, Formation, and Rheology of Cubic Phase and Related Gel Emulsion in Tween80/Water/Oil Systems

We investigated the phase behavior, formation, and rheology of the cubic phase (I-1) and related O/I-1 gel emulsion in water/Tween 80/oil systems using squalane, liquid paraffin (LP), and decane as oil components. In the phase behavior study, the phase sequences were similar for squalane and LP systems, while a lamellar liquid crystal (L-alpha) was observed for decane system. In all the systems the addition of oil to W-m or H-1 phase induced the I-1 phase, which can solubilize some amounts of oil followed by the appearance of I-1+O phase. The formation of the O/I-1 gel emulsion has been studied at a fixed w/s (50/50) and we found that 30 wt% decane, 70 wt% squalane, and 60 wt% LP can form the gel emulsion. The water/Tween 80/squalane system has been taken as a model system to study viscoelastic properties of the I-1 phase and O/I-1, gel emulsion. The I-1 phase shows a typical hard gel cubic structure under the frequency and the values of the complex viscosity, |eta*| and the elastic modulus, G' increase with the addition of squalane, which could be due to the neighboring micellar interaction. On the other hand, the decreasing values of the viscoelastic parameters in the O/I-1 gel emulsion simply relate to the volume fraction of the I-1 phase in the system.