Such a diameter increase may be due to flocculation or to coalescence.
In the first case, it would mean that the emulsion degradation
is reversible, and that after a certain excitement the
emulsion would take back the initial droplets size distribution. In
the second case, the degradation is irreversible and it would be
necessary to re-emulsify the mixture. Microscopy observations
(Supplementary data S4) showed that the size of the primary droplets
did not increase, whereas aggregates are getting larger after
1 month. Flocculation is thus the driving mechanism for emulsion
destabilization in our systems.