Adhesion between pure and mixed surfactant layers

We study adhesive emulsion droplets that are stabilized with pure and mixed surfactant systems. By measuring contact angles between the droplets, we d educe the energy of adhesion and the Gibbs adsorption of ionic and nonionic surfactants onto the adhesive interfaces. We find that this adsorption is significantly different from the adsorption onto isolated monolayers. The d ifference reflects the coupling between adsorption and surface interactions . In addition, we investigate the consequences of these phenomena on the be havior of micron-sized emulsions. The adhesion between the surfactant layer s leads to the aggregation of the particles and to their deposit onto solid substrates,being thereby potentially useful for applications related to co atings and colloidal deposits.