Interacting C n E m non-ionic micellar systems
- 1 January 1985
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions 2: Molecular and Chemical Physics
- Vol. 81 (1) , 145-158
- https://doi.org/10.1039/f29858100145
Abstract
Trends in the temperature dependence of the effective intermicellar attraction ε(T) have been calculated for a series of non-ionic ethylene oxide surfactants CnEm[CnH2n+ 1(OCH2CH2)mOH] using the penetrable-sphere model of Widom and Rowlinson to model the cloud curve. The form of ε(T) may be analytically related to the critical exponent and to the shape of the coexistence curve close to the lower consolute solution temperature in the mean-field approximation. The results show that ε(T) calculated from the scaled cloud curves increases more rapidly with temperature as the alkyl chain length is varied over the range n= 8, 10, 12 and 16 while little effect of headgroup size is seen in the range of m available. The application of the concept of corresponding states to these systems is discussed and the results are related to two recent alternative approaches and to the experimental evidence for the characterisation of the structure of CnEm micelles.Keywords
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