Effect of surfactants on the deformation and break-up of an aqueous drop in oils under high electric field strengths

•The effect of surfactant on the deformation of drops in oil under electric field has been studied.•The drop deformation extent increases rapidly with the surfactant concentration.•The extent of drop deformation shows a remarkable unification of all data using Webber number.

Understanding the deformation and break-up of drops is of great significance in various applications such as emulsification and phase separation. Most practical systems contain surface-active agents that are present as impurities affecting the properties of the system, e.g. modifying the rigidity of the film that affects emulsion stability. In this paper, the effect of surfactants on the deformation and break-up of an aqueous drop in an immiscible dielectric oil under the action of an electric field is addressed. The experiments were carried out on a single drop in a microscopic cell under an applied external electric field. A nonionic surfactant, polyethylene glycol sorbitan monolaurate (Tween 20), and an ionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), were used at different concentrations. The drop adopted in most cases a prolate shape. However, the presence of the surfactant affected both the extent of deformation and the modes of break-up. The drop deformation extent increased rapidly with the surfactant concentration, while smaller drops deformed less under the same external electric field strength. When the surfactant concentration was high, the position of break-up could be from both poles along the main axis of the drops in the direction of the electric field.