Geometric packing parameters, self-assembled

The packing property of self-assembling systems seems to depend on many factors. For a quantitative discussion of the relationship between the geometrical packing parameters and morphological characteristics, one must investigate the conformational change of surfactant molecules induced by... 

Surfactant-like lipids adopt either normal (type 1) or inverted (type 2) self-assembled phases, resulting in either oil-in-water (o/w) phases with convex curvature lipid/water interface or water-in-oil (w/o) phases with a concave interface, respectively. The formation of a normal or an inverted self-assembled nanostructure in water mainly depends on the lipid s molecular shape, as discussed in the seventies by Israelachvili and co-workers [78], In this regard, the geometric shape of the lipid can be a useful tool for predicting the water-lipid interface curvature and also can be helpful in imderstanding the phase behavior of binary, ternary, and even multi-component systems [79], For this purpose, the shape factor or more commonly known in the literature as the critical packing parameter CPP) was defined [78] as ... 

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