Rheological Properties of Anionic Surfactant Solutions in the Presence of Al3+ Counterion

Aqueous solutions of ionic surfactants with strongly binding counterions exhibit wormlike or network properties. The properties of anionic micelles of sodium dodecyltrioxyethylene sulfate (AES) in the presence of multivalent counterion Al³⁺ were investigated by dynamic rheological methods. The steady-shear viscosity and stress, the zero-shear viscosity, the complex viscosity, and the dynamic shear modulus have been determined as a function of the surfactant and salt concentrations. Some interesting and noticeable results have been obtained, which can express the micellar growth and structure. The formation of wormlike micelles or network structure in surfactant solutions becomes much easier with increasing surfactant and salt concentrations. The Cox-Merz rule and the Cole-Cole plot are not applicable perfectly to the systems studied. The nonlinear viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian behavior can be found in all solutions according to the comparison with the simple Maxwell model. The technique of freeze-fracture transmission electron microscopy (FF-TEM) was also applied to confirm the formation of these interesting structures.     

The Aqueous Dispersions of Bicontinuous Cubic Phases Formed by Precursor Method

The morphologies and the microstructures of the dispersed particles of the cubic phase, which were formed by precursor method, were studied. The freeze-fracture TEM clearly showed that the aqueous dispersed particles have irregular cubic shapes. X-ray diffraction technique has been utilized to study the microstructure of the particles and it was found that these particles still retained the cubic character. The sizes of the particles were measured by dynamic light scattering, and the results showed that the sizes of the dispersed particles were between 200～400 nm under different conditions.     

Surfactant-free oil/water and bicontinuous microemulsion composed of benzene, ethanol and water

<正>Generally,a microemulsion consists of oil,water,surfactant and sometimes cosurfactant.Herein,we report a novel suffactant-free microemulsion(denoted as SFME) composed of benzene,water and ethanol without the amphiphilic molecular structure of traditional surfactant.The phase behavior of the ternary system was investigated,finding that there were a single-phase region and a two-phase region in ternary phase diagram.The electrical conductivity measurement was employed to investigate the microregion of the single-phase region,and a bicontinuous microregion and a benzene-in-water(O/W) microemulsion microregion were identified,which was confirmed by freeze-fracture transmission electron microscopy(FF-TEM) observations.The sizes of the microemulsion droplets are in the range of 20-50 nm.