Surfactants, Micelles and Fascinating Phenomena

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this article we shall describe processes and phenomena which may appear startling and unusual for someone who is familiar with the behavior of solutions of low molecular weight solutes. Some of these phenomena might even be surprising for someone who works with surfactants. The authors still remember their astonishment when they first became aware of a viscoelastic surfactant solution. This was many years after our group had started investigations on surfactants. But all of the solutions we had encountered until that time had behaved normally. Some of the phenomena which will be discussed are also encountered in solutions of polymers. Due to their high molecular weight one expects to find properties which are different from the properties of low molecular weight solutions and does not find them so surprising. Surfactant solutions, however, are aqueous solutions of small molecules with typical molecular weights of 200 to 400. For some of our experiments even dilute solutions were used which contained only up to one percent of surfactant.