Higher Salt Hydrophobicity Lengthens Ionic Wormlike Micelles and Stabilizes Them upon Heating

Tuning the rheological properties of surfactant solutions by charge screening is a convenient formulation tool in cosmetic, household, oil recovery, drag-reduction, and thickening applications. Surfactants self-assemble in water, and upon charge screening and core shielding, they grow into long wormlike micelles (WLMs). These are valuable model systems for soft matter physics, and the most explored formulation is hexadecyl-trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium salicylate (NaSal). Replacing NaSal with aromatic salts of altered hydrophobicity results in different penetration of the additive in the CTAB micellar core. This altered penetration depth will determine the anisotropic micellar growth that tailors the viscoelastic response. Sodium 4-methylsalicylate (mNaSal) is a higher hydrophobicity alternative to NaSal, requiring less additive to induce strong changes in the viscoelastic properties. Herein, we provide a comparative study of the mNaSal/CTAB system with the reference NaSal/CTAB over a range of temperatures and salt concentrations. The findings from the well-known NaSal/CTAB pair are transferred to the mNaSal/CTAB system, revealing the origins of the WLM solution's viscoelastic properties by discerning contributions from charge screening and micellar core shielding upon small differences in hydrophobicity.

Elasticity in Bubble Rupture

When a Newtonian bubble ruptures, the film retraction dynamics is controlled by the interplay of surface, inertial, and viscous forces. In case a viscoelastic liquid is considered, the scenario is enriched by the appearance of a new significant contribution, namely, the elastic force. In this paper, we investigate experimentally the retraction of viscoelastic bubbles inflated at different blowing rates, showing that the amount of elastic energy stored by the liquid film enclosing the bubble depends on the inflation history and in turn affects the velocity of film retraction when the bubble is punctured. Several viscoelastic liquids are considered. We also perform direct numerical simulations to support the experimental findings. Finally, we develop a simple heuristic model able to interpret the physical mechanism underlying the process.

Effect of the salt-induced micellar microstructure on the nonlinear shear flow behavior of ionic cetylpyridinium chloride surfactant solutions

The shear flow dynamics of linear and branched wormlike micellar systems based on cetylpyridinium chloride and sodium salicylate in brine solution is investigated through rheometric and scattering techniques. In particular, the flow and the structural flow response are explored via velocimetry measurements and rheological and rheometric small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments, respectively. Although all micellar solutions display a similar shear thinning behavior in the nonlinear regime, the experimental results show that shear banding sets in only when the micelle contour length L[over ¯] is sufficiently long, independent of the nature of the micellar connections (either linear or branched micelles). Using rheometric SANS, we observe that the shear banding systems both show very similar orientational ordering as a function of Weissenberg number, while the short branched micelles manifest an unexpected increase of ordering at very low Weissenberg numbers. This suggests the presence of an additional flow-induced relaxation process that is peculiar for branched systems.