Potential of environmental scanning electron microscopy and SAXS to determine structural insights of plant-based emulsions with increasing dry matter content

Abstract

Plant-based emulsions with increasing dry matter content show a large range of structural features from atomic to macroscopic length scales, which may be examined with scattering techniques in reciprocal space and microscopic techniques in real space. In this contribution, we focus on plan-based emulsions in terms of mesoscopic structure, and report on the impact of temperature and humidity on the structure measured via environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) in real space. Small angle x-ray scattering in reciprocal space extends the knowledge on structural properties on smaller length scales at different temperature. Decreasing the humidity for the ESEM experiments revealed structural properties of different products. Temperature decrease from room temperature to 5 °C showed emerging crystalline peaks during SAXS measurements.