Formation of stable adhesive water-in-oil emulsions using a phospholipid and cosurfactants

The use of adhesive water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions covered with phospholipids have been limited due to their poor stability. We suggest a new and simple method to create adhesive W/O emulsions stabilized by 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) with two different cosurfactants (docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and sorbitan oleate (SPAN 80)). Although an adhesive W/O emulsion with DOPC is typically unstable because of its molecular structure, we demonstrate that the addition of cosurfactants whose molecular shapes could be complementary to that of DOPC far better stabilizes W/O emulsions and indeed leads to the production of adhesive emulsions by the formation of a bilayer between two monolayers of each droplet surface.