Hendrikse RL, Bayly AE, Jimack PK. Studying the Structure of Sodium Lauryl Ether Sulfate Solutions Using Dissipative Particle Dynamics.
J Phys Chem B 2022;
126:8058-8071. [PMID:
36179249 PMCID:
PMC9574933 DOI:
10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c04329]
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Abstract
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Sodium lauryl ether
sulfate (SLES) is a common anionic surfactant
used in a large number of personal care products. Commercial products
typically contain a distribution in the number of ethoxy groups; despite
this, there is limited existing work studying the effect of the ethoxy
groups on the phase formation and structure. This is particularly
important for the effect the structure has on the viscosity, an important
consideration for commercial products. Dissipative particle dynamics
is used to simulate the full phase diagram of SLES in water, including
both micellar and lyotropic liquid crystal phases. Phase transitions
occur at locations which are in good agreement with experimental data,
and we find that these boundaries can shift as a result of varying
the number of ethoxy groups. Varying the ethoxy groups has a significant
effect on the micellar shape and crystalline spacing, with a reduction
leading to more nonspherical micelles and decreased periodic spacing
of the hexagonal and lamellar phases. Finally, while typical commercial
products contain a distribution of ethoxy groups, computational work
tends to focus on simulations containing a single chain length. We
show that it is valid to use monodisperse simulations to infer behavior
about solutions with a polydisperse chain length, based on its mean
molecular length.
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