title: Principal role of the stepwise aggregation mechanism in ionic surfactant solutions near the critical micelle concentration. Molecular dynamics study.
abstract: The validity of the assumption on the predominant contribution of the stepwise processes to the ionic micelle formation/destruction in the vicinity of critical micelle concentration was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. A coarse-grained model was used to describe the surfactant/water mixture. The cluster size distribution was estimated directly from molecular dynamics simulations or obtained from a reduced set of kinetic equations. The good agreement between two approaches shows that the neglect of the terms responsible for cluster fusion/fission is fully justified and that such processes are less important than stepwise aggregation.
authors: Department of Chemistry, Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskiy pr. 26, Stariy Petergof, Saint Petersburg 198504, Russia. stanislavburov@ya.ru
authors: Stanislav V
authors: SV
authors: Burov
authors: Alexandr A
authors: AA
authors: Vanin
authors: Elena N
authors: EN
authors: Brodskaya