title: Monitoring the transition from spherical to polymer-like surfactant micelles using small-angle X-ray scattering.
abstract: Despite over a century of modern surfactant science, the kinetic pathways of morphological transitions in micellar systems are still not well understood. This is mainly as a result of the lack of sufficiently fast methods that can capture the structural changes of such transitions. Herein, a simple surfactant system consisting of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in aqueous NaCl solutions is investigated. Combining synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) with fast stopped-flow mixing schemes allows monitoring the process where polymer-like micelles are formed from globular micelles when the salt concentration is suddenly increased. The results show that "worm-like" micelles are formed by fusion of globular micelles and short cylinders in a fashion that bears similarities to a step-like polymerization process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO), Aarhus University, Gustav Wieds Vej 14, 8000 Aarhus C (Denmark).
authors.forename: Grethe Vestergaard
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.forename: Reidar
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lund
authors.forename: Jérémie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gummel
authors.forename: Theyencheri
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Narayanan
authors.forename: Jan Skov
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Pedersen
keywords: kinetics; micelles; small-angle X-ray scattering; step-growth polymerization; surfactants