Polymers with advanced architectures as emulsifiers for multi-functional emulsions

Abstract

Emulsions have wide applications in the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Emulsions stabilized with polymers having different architectures, such as linear diblock and triblock copolymers, branched polymers, star polymers, graft polymers, and densely grafted bottlebrush polymers, have been used for encapsulation, delivery, and as templates for polymerization reactions. Stimuli-responsive polymers have been used for on-demand demulsification and emulsion engineering. In this review, we highlight the developments in the past decade that used polymers with advanced architectures as multi-functional emulsifiers.