Functional Colloidal Stabilization

Surfactants can stabilize colloids in dispersion; however, also additional chemical or physical functions can be added by the surfactant chemistry to the colloid. This review covers functional colloid stabilization whereby supplementary features in addition to simple repulsion via physisorbed molecules are described. The utilization of surface-active functional stabilizers as a fast and flexible method to obtain colloidal particles with significantly improved interaction potential makes functionalization possible. This method has proved to be extremely material- and time-efficient. On account of the self-assembling ability of the stabilizers, the functional groups can target exact positioning of chemical and/or physical interaction sites directly in the surface region of the colloidal particle. In this review, different strategies for the generation of functional and/or responsive dispersion by precise adjustment of the surfactant chemistry are summarized. By such means, temperature-, pH-, redox-, light- and other stimuli have been installed to colloids which are investigated for various applications.