Water surfactant molecules

As we know, the surface tension of water is high. When droplets of water fall on waxy surfaces, they tend to form small spheres. If a surfactant is added to water, surfactant molecules will displace some water molecules from the surface, which lowers the surface tension (Figure 2.7). As a result, the droplets can spread over the waxy surface and lose their spherical shape. Therefore, in addition to acting as surface-active agents in spray solutions, surfactants also lower the surface tension of water, thus increasing the area of contact. 

When swollen in water, surfactant molecules with two long hydrocarbon chains can form single-compartmented (unilamellar) or multi-compartmented (multilamellar)... 

The "closed" lamella it is a lamella surrounded by a cylindrical shell made of pure (i.e. without water) surfactant molecules, which isolates an eventual aqueous central film from the hydrocarbon solvent (figure 3b). 

Surfactants are classified by their ionic (electrically charged particles) properties in water. Surfactant molecules can be described as resembling a tadpole (immature frog) because they contain a fairly long fatty acid tail (hydrophobic or water insoluble) and a small, often electrically charged head (hydrophilic or water soluble). The long hydrocarbon (CH2 groups)... 

Soap is one example of a broader class of materials known as surface-active agents, or surfactants (qv). Surfactant molecules contain both a hydrophilic or water-liking portion and a separate hydrophobic or water-repelling portion. The hydrophilic portion of a soap molecule is the carboxylate head group and the hydrophobic portion is the aUphatic chain. This class of materials is simultaneously soluble in both aqueous and organic phases or preferential aggregate at air—water interfaces. It is this special chemical stmcture that leads to the abiUty of surfactants to clean dirt and oil from surfaces and produce lather. 

Monolayers at the Air—Water Interface. Molecules that form monolayers at the water—air interface are called amphiphiles or surfactants (qv). Such molecules are insoluble in water. One end is hydrophilic, and therefore is preferentially immersed in the water the other end is hydrophobic, and preferentially resides in the air, or in a nonpolar solvent. A classic example of an amphiphile is stearic acid, C H COOH, wherein the long hydrocarbon... 

The main supramolecular self-assembled species involved in analytical chemistry are micelles (direct and reversed), microemulsions (oil/water and water/oil), liposomes, and vesicles, Langmuir-Blodgett films composed of diphilic surfactant molecules or ions. They can form in aqueous, nonaqueous liquid media and on the surface. The other species involved in supramolecular analytical chemistry are molecules-receptors such as calixarenes, cyclodextrins, cyclophanes, cyclopeptides, crown ethers etc. Furthermore, new supramolecular host-guest systems arise due to analytical reaction or process. 

The second important attribute of amphiphiles is their affinity to both water and oil. This aspect is retained in the microscopic models, which will be discussed in Sec. Ill and IV. Oil, water, and surfactant molecules are represented by simplified pseudoparticles. 

The line = 0 can be considered as a borderline for applicability of the basic model, in which the Gaussian curvature is always negative. Recall that in the basic model the oil-water interface is saturated by the surfactant molecules by construction of the model. Hence, for equal oil and water volume fractions the Gaussian curvature must be negative, by the definition of the model. 

The above results show that the structure of the system with the molecules self-assembled into the internal films is determined by their correlation functions. In contrast to simple fluids, the four-point correlation functions are as important as the two-point correlation functions for the description of the structure in this case. The oil or water domain size is related to the period of oscillations A of the two-point functions. The connectivity of the oil and water domains, related to the sign of K, is determined by the way four moleeules at distanees eomparable to their sizes are eorrelated. For > 0 surfactant molecules are correlated in such a way that preferred orientations... 

In ternary mixtures of oil, water, and surfactant the ordering properties of the system follow from the vectorial character of the interactions of the surfactant molecules with both the oil and the water molecules. The typical size of the ordered domains, much larger than the molecular size, justifies the application of the mesoscopic Landau-Ginzburg approach to the ordering. In the simplest approach of Gompper and Schick [3,12], which we call here the basic Landau-Ginzburg model, the orientational degrees of free-... 

NOTE The orientation of surfactant molecules at an interface (water-solvent, water-gas, water-metal) confers performance characteristics on the molecule that permit it to be employed as an emulsifier, demulsifier, wetting agent, antifoam, lubricant, or other agent. 

The Gibbs equation allows the amount of surfactant adsorbed at the interface to be calculated from the interfacial tension values measured with different concentrations of surfactant, but at constant counterion concentration. The amount adsorbed can be converted to the area of a surfactant molecule. The co-areas at the air-water interface are in the range of 4.4-5.9 nm2/molecule [56,57]. A comparison of these values with those from molecular models indicates that all four surfactants are oriented normally to the interface with the carbon chain outstretched and closely packed. The co-areas at the oil-water interface are greater (heptane-water, 4.9-6.6 nm2/molecule benzene-water, 5.9-7.5 nm2/molecule). This relatively small increase of about 10% for the heptane-water and about 30% for the benzene-water interface means that the orientation at the oil-water interface is the same as at the air-water interface, but the a-sulfo fatty acid ester films are more expanded [56]. 

Eqnation 4 shows that, at constant , a change of the external parameter/ affects not only the radins but also the concentration of water-containing reversed micelles. It is also of interest that, by increasing R, the fraction of bulklike water molecules located in the core (or the time fraction spent by each water molecule in the core) of spherical reversed micelles increases progressively, whereas the opposite occurs for perturbed water molecules located at the water-surfactant interface, as a consequence of the parallel decrease of the micellar surface-to-volume ratio. 

The different location of polar and amphiphilic molecules within water-containing reversed micelles is depicted in Figure 6. Polar solutes, by increasing the micellar core matter of spherical micelles, induce an increase in the micellar radius, while amphiphilic molecules, being preferentially solubihzed in the water/surfactant interface and consequently increasing the interfacial surface, lead to a decrease in the miceUar radius [49,136,137], These effects can easily be embodied in Eqs. (3) and (4), aUowing a quantitative evaluation of the mean micellar radius and number density of reversed miceUes in the presence of polar and amphiphilic solubilizates. Moreover it must be pointed out that, as a function of the specific distribution law of the solubihzate molecules and on a time scale shorter than that of the material exchange process, the system appears polydisperse and composed of empty and differently occupied reversed miceUes [136],... 

By small-angle neutron scattering experiments on water/AOT/hydrocarbon microemulsions containing various additives, the change of the radius of the miceUar core with the addition of small quantities of additives has been investigated. The results are consistent with a model in which amphiphilic molecules such as benzyl alcohol and octanol are preferentially adsorbed into the water/surfactant interfacial region, decreasing the micellar radius, whereas toluene remains predominantly in the bulk hydrocarbon phase. The effect of n-alcohols on the stability of microemulsions has also been reported [119],... 

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