Lyophobic materials hate solvents and require special treatment to form colloidal solutions. They are irreversible and unstable, and their molecules repel other materials. Lyophobic solutions respond to electric charges and require stabilizers to obtain compound solutions.
“Lyophobic” is a descriptive term for the state of certain particles of matter when combined in a solution. The term comes from the breakdown of lyo, meaning “solvent”, and phobic, meaning “hate”. Lyophobic materials hate all solvents, unlike hydrophobic materials which only hate water.
Solvent-hating materials such as iron, mercury, arsenic and precious metals such as gold and platinum require special treatment. These materials usually combine into solutions called colloidal solutions; Lyophobic colloids are one of the two main types of colloidal solutions. Since solvent-hating materials do not form solutions easily, various elaborate preparations are made to present them in a useful compound.
The properties of lyophobic materials include their irreversibility and their instability. They are considered irreversible organic compounds because, if the solvent is removed, they do not easily form another compound by simply introducing new solvent. Lyophilic colloidal materials, which are considered solvent-loving, are considered reversible as they recombine easily. Lyophobic materials in solution are considered to be less stable, because their interaction forces with other materials are so weak compared to the strong bonds of lyophilic materials. Their molecules repel other materials, so they must be manipulated to make possible the creation of colloidal solutions.
One of the properties of lyophobic colloidal solutions that differentiate them from lyophilic colloidal solutions is their behavior under positive and negative electric charges. Lyophobic solutions under an electric field will immediately shift towards negative if a negative charge is applied and towards positive if a positive charge is applied. Lyophilic solutions do not respond to electric charges at all, unless the dispersing agent in which they were dissolved responds to the charge, in which case they follow their dispersant. Lyophobic solutions of starches, proteins, and sulfur have a viscosity similar to or equal to that of their dispersing solvents, while lyophilic solutions are much stickier than their dispersing solvent.
Since liquid-hating substances require manipulations and stabilizers to obtain compound solutions, different preparations have been developed based on the essential nature of the particular lyophobic material. For example, to obtain a colloidal compound with gold, reducing agents such as formaldehyde or hydrogen peroxide can be used to treat the gold salts to produce a gold solution with a purple hue. Mercury is prepared by changing its physical state when its vapor is passed through a cold water bath with the addition of a stabilizer such as ammonium salt. Paints, varnishes, and black inks are lyophobic colloidal materials that pass through a mechanical colloid mill that grinds the solution between two rotating disks to create a shear force to combine them when the particles are nanometer-sized.
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