Clipped random wave analysis of anisometric lamellar microemulsions.
Small-angle neutron scattering experiments were performed on C10E4-D2O-octane (where C10E4 is tetraethylene glycol monodecyl ether) anisometric microemulsions in the lamellar phase at a constant surfactant volume fraction of 20% and at the hydrophile-lipophile balance temperature of 22.5 degrees C. The results were analyzed using a clipped random wave model with a specific spectral distribution function developed by us previously. This enabled us to generate three-dimensional morphologies of the microemulsions, which showed clearly that in sufficiently anisometric microemulsions the oil-water interface was no longer connected. At large anisometry isolated regions of oil or water were found, and the transition from a bicontinuous structure at isometry to these isolated micelles far from isometry goes through an intermediate cylindrical morphology when the oil-to-water or water-to-oil ratio is around 4 to 1. We further computed the joint distribution function of the mean curvature H and Gaussian curvature K of the entire oil-water interface for each anisometric microemulsion. In particular, we show the distribution of <H>, <K>, and <H2>-<H>(2) for different isolated regions within an oil-rich microemulsion at an oil-to-water ratio of 85% to 15%. These distributions allowed us to prove that the isolated regions formed in highly anisometric microemulsions were small and had spherical topology.
Choy
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D
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Chen
S H
SH