Surface chains and balls

Emulsions, which are coarse or crude dispersions of spherical oil droplets in a dispersion medium of solvent, usually water are maintained in a metastable form by the employment of surface-active agents (aka surfactants or amphiphilic polymers) that accumulate at the interface between oil and water. Emulsions are used for a large range of complex products such as pharmaceuticals (e.g. anaesthetics, creams, skin patches), personal care product (e.g. emollients), vaccine adjuvants (excipients for immunopotentiation), cosmetics (e.g. lip salve, hair conditioners), printing inks, foods (e.g. mayonnaise) and petrochemicals (e.g. crude oil), including lubricants (e.g. engineering cutting fluids). Traditionally, hydrophilic polymers, where acrylate-based forms feature routinely, which bind water though polar functional group or ionised chemical groups on
the molecule find applications as thickeners and product texturisers.