Influence of organic solvents and temperature on the micellization of conventional and gemini surfactants: a conductometric study

The micellar behaviour of similar hydrophobic chain length conventional (cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide, CTAB; cetyl pyridinium chloride, CPC; cetyldimethylbenzyl ammonium chloride, C16BCl) and gemini surfactant (16-2-16) in water and polar non-aqueous solvents has been investigated in the temperature range 288.15–318.15 K with the help of conductivity measurements. The method proposed by Carpena et al. has been used to analyse the conductivity–concentration to determine the micellization parameters using critical micelle concentration (CMC) and degree of counter-ion dissociation (α) of the micelle. It shows much better performance than the conventional methods and the effect of experimental errors on the evaluation of the micellization parameters has been shown to be minimal by using this procedure. It was observed that the micellization tendency of the surfactant decreases in the presence of solvents. Thermodynamic parameters were also evaluated from the temperature dependence of the CMC values.