Authors

G. K. Bourov;A. Bhattacharya

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Chem. Phys.

Keywords

MONTE-CARLO-SIMULATION; SOLVENT MIXTURE; LATTICE MODEL; CATIONIC; SURFACTANTS; AQUEOUS MIXTURES; PHASE-SEPARATION; ACTIVE AGENTS; MICELLIZATION; AMPHIPHILE; SYSTEMS; Physics, Atomic, Molecular & Chemical

Abstract

We investigate micelle formation in a system containing two or more different amphiphiles with different geometries using a stochastic molecular-dynamics (MD) simulation method. For a binary system containing two amphiphiles, we calculate the critical micelle concentration (CMC) and cluster distribution for the mixture at several mole fractions and compare the simulation results with those predicted by analytic theories in the dilute limit and with experiments. We find that the CMC obtained from molecular mean-field theory agrees well with our simulation results. Motivated by the industrial use of mixed surfactant systems, we then extend our studies to a system containing six different chain lengths drawn from a Poisson distribution. We find that unlike a binary mixture of amphiphiles, the different species cancel the effects of each other so that the cluster distribution for the mixture has a shape of a system consisted entirely of amphiphiles of length equal to the mean chain length of the Poisson distribution.

Journal Title

Journal of Chemical Physics

Volume

123

Issue/Number

20

Publication Date

1-1-2005

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

6

WOS Identifier

WOS:000233661000067

ISSN

0021-9606

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