Giant wormlike micelles

In contrast to statics, the relaxational kinetics of living polymers and of giant wormlike micelles is unique (and different in both cases). It is entirely determined by the processes of scission/recombination and results in a nonlinear approach to equilibrium. A comparison of simulational results and laboratory observations in this respect is still missing and would be highly desirable. 

Won Y-Y, Davis HT, Bates FS. Giant wormlike rubber micelles. Science 1999 283 960-963. 

Borsali R, Minatti E et al (2003) From "sunflower-like" assemblies toward giant wormlike micelles. Langmuir 19 6-9... 

Some ionic surfactants form long, wormlike micelles in aqueous media, especially in the presence of electrolyte or other additives that decrease the repulsion between the ionic head groups (Raghavan, 2001). These giant, wormlike micelles give rise to unusually strong viscoelasticity because of the entanglement of these structures. 

The appearance of the local minimum in the concentration dependency of the relaxation time of the slow process for concentrated solutions can be connected also with formation of non-spherical micelles [140]. Actually, it is well-known that micelles change their shape with increasing concentration. The increase of the concentration of some counterions can lead to the formation of giant wormlike micelles (living polymers) [141]. In this case the equilibrium size distribution of micelles changes entirely and is described by an exponential law [141]... 

Various studies suggested the existence of structures intermediate between micelles and vesicles. These structures — perforated vesicles, bilayer fragments, giant wormlike micelles, ringlike micelles, and disklike micelles, depending on the investigated system — were visualized by cryo-TEM.3 > > Some of these structures are shown in Figure 1.10. However, for some systems no intermediate structure... 

Figure 3.11 Cryo-TEM image of a solution of the dimeric surfactant 12-2-12 after shear showing giant wormlike micelles and bvm-dles of such micelles indicated by arrows. These bundles were not seen before shearing. Bar = 1 am. Reproduced from Reference 152 with permission of the American Chemical Society.

Zhu, J.T. and Jiang, W. (2005) Self-assembly of ABC triblock copolymer into giant segmented wormlike micelles in dilute solution. Macromolecules, 38,9315—9323. 

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