Micelles, giant, semidilute/concentrated

Experimental evidence shows that quite often solutions of giant micelles posses static and dynamic properties analogous to those of macromolecules [108,192]. Their primary structure is both unidimensional and flexible. In the dilute regime, giant micelles are characterized by nonuniform size distribution, which is strongly influenced by experimental conditions [108]. At higher concentrations, in the semidilute regime, the main differences between micelles and polymer solutions vanish [108]. 

Figure 9 Dimensionless apparent molecular weight Mapp times the concentration c of giant surfactant micelles of hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide in brine, obtained by means of light scattering measurements at a temperature of 306 K. Circles experimental data of Buhler and coworkers [50]. Line renormalization group theory for self-assembled flexible chains fitted to the data [51,52], Also indicated by the dashed lines are the predictions of scaling theory in the dilute and semidilute regimes [1,53], which agree well with results of Monte Carlo simulation [52],...

Shear Banding Transition in Semidilute and Concentrated Giant Micelles. 

In conclusion, our experiments strongly support the analogy between giant worm-like micelles and "living polymers." In the semidilute regime, the micellar self-diffusion mechanism is a reptation process truncated by a micellar breaking-recombination process. Further work is however needed to clarify the dependence of the dynamic properties on surfactant concentration. 

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