Rheological Behavior and in Situ Confocal Imaging of Bijels Made by Mixing

Bijels (bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels) have the potential to be useful in many different applications due to their internal connectivity and the possibility of efficient mass transport through the channels. Recently, new methods of making the bijel have been proposed, which simplify the fabrication process, making commercial application more realistic. Here, we study the flow properties of bijels prepared by mixing alone using oscillatory rheology combined with confocal microscopy and also squeezing flow experiments. We found that the bijel undergoes a two-step yielding process where the first step corresponds to the fluidizing of the interface, allowing the motion of the structure, and the second step corresponds to the breaking of the structure. In the squeeze flow experiments, the yield stress of the bijel is observed to show a power law dependence on squeezing speed. However, when stress in excess of yield stress is plotted against shear rate, all the different squeeze flow data show a superposition.