Bulk and surface correlations in a microemulsion

Emergence of a Spin Microemulsion in Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensates

We report the first numerical prediction of a "spin microemulsion"-a phase with undulating spin domains resembling classical bicontinuous oil-water-surfactant emulsions-in two-dimensional systems of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates with isotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Using field-theoretic numerical simulations, we investigated the melting of a low-temperature stripe phase with supersolid character and find that the stripes lose their superfluidity at elevated temperature and undergo a Kosterlitz-Thouless-like transition into a spin microemulsion. Momentum distribution calculations highlight a thermally broadened occupation of the Rashba circle of low-energy states with macroscopic and isotropic occupation around the ring. We provide a finite-temperature phase diagram that positions the emulsion as an intermediate, structured isotropic phase with residual quantum character before transitioning at higher temperature into a structureless normal fluid.

Microemulsions as Emerging Electrolytes: The Correlation of Structure to Electrochemical Response

We describe the structural studies of microemulsions (μEs) prepared from water, toluene, butanol, and polysorbate 20 (PS20) that we recently used as electrolytes. Small-angle neutron scattering was used to monitor the development of the bicontinuous system as a function of the water-to-surfactant mass ratio on a constant oil-to-surfactant dilution line, revealing how the domain size, correlation length, amphiphilicity factor, and bending moduli change with composition. Kratky and Porod analyses are also employed, providing further structural detail of the scattering domains. We demonstrate that controlling the water-to-surfactant ratio with a constant oil-to-surfactant dilution affects the bicontinuous phase, reveals a sizeable compositional region with structural similarities, and provides insight into the correlation of structure to physical properties. Voltammetric results are presented to examine how the evolution of the bicontinuous structure formed in a μE prepared from water, toluene, butanol, and PS20 contributes to the electrochemical response. These findings, therefore, provide essential information that will guide the formulation of μEs as electrolytes for energy storage.

Structure, interfacial film properties, and thermal fluctuations of microemulsions as seen by scattering experiments

The physics of microemulsions and in particular Dominique Langevin's contributions to the understanding of microemulsion structure and bending properties using scattering techniques are reviewed. Among the many methods used by her and her co-workers, we particularly emphasize optical techniques and small angle neutron scattering (SANS), but also neutron spin echo spectroscopy (NSE). The review is then extended to more recent studies of properties of microemulsions close to surfaces, using reflectometry and grazing-incidence small angle neutron scattering (GISANS).

Sugar Surfactant Based Microemulsions at Solid Surfaces: Influence of the Oil Type and Surface Polarity

The structure of sugar-surfactant-based bicontinuous microemulsions in the bulk and at hydrophilic and hydrophobic solid planar surfaces was studied by means of neutron scattering techniques (SANS, NR, and GISANS). In particular, the influence of the type of oil (tetradecane and methyl oleate) on the structural properties in the vicinity of surfaces was investigated at different oil-to-water ratios. In the case of hydrophilic surfaces, the analysis of the scattering length density profiles reveals an induced ordering of the oil and water domains perpendicular to the solid-liquid interface in both sets of microemulsions. At hydrophobic surfaces, differences in the near-surface ordering between microemulsions containing polar and nonpolar oils are observed.

Near-surface structure of a bicontinuous microemulsion with a transition region

The lamellar ordering of bicontinuous microemulsions adjacent to a planar hydrophilic wall is investigated experimentally by grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering and theoretically by computer simulations. It is shown that precise depth information in neutron scattering can be obtained by tuning the scattering length density of the overall microemulsion. Neutron reflectometry completes the characterization. The nucleation of a lamellar phase at the wall is observed, and a perforated lamellar transition region is identified at the lamellar-microemulsion interface. The thickness of the lamellar region is about 400 Å, which corresponds to two bilayers.

Quasiwetting on spherical solid surfaces by oil-water-amphiphile mixtures

We study the wetting behavior on spherical walls by ternary mixtures of oil, water, and an amphiphile. We use the Ginzburg-Landau free energy with a single order parameter and find that there are different stable structures of the interface and that a quasiwetting transition is the mechanism involved in the transition among them. We calculate these wetting transitions for two sets of parameters in the bulk free energy which are known to show microemulsion behavior. The surface transitions are thin-thick first-order transitions (continuous transitions are absent), and the phase diagram in surface parameter space is constructed. For the first set of bulk parameters water, oil, and a microemulsion coexist, and we study the first-order transition where the oil phase wets the wall-microemulsion interface and its behavior as the radius of the wall becomes large. Therefore, we recover the known wetting transitions on a planar wall. In the second set of bulk parameters only water and oil coexist, and for some sizes of the solid wall, the oil phase wets the wall-water interface, and the phase behavior is extremely rich. We obtain a coexistence of four surface phases or two triple points followed by three lines of first-order transitions which end at three critical points depending on the radius of the surface. When there are micellar metastable solutions in bulk, the behavior of the thickness of the wetting layer of the oil phase as the radius of the spherical wall gets larger is nonmonotonic. We associate this behavior with the intrinsic micelle structure due to the spontaneous curvature of the model.

X-ray study of oil-microemulsion and oil-water interfaces in ternary amphiphilic systems

We present x-ray reflectivity and diffuse scattering measurements from the interfaces between oil-rich and microemulsion bulk phases and between oil-rich and water-rich phases in three-component microemulsion systems (consisting of water, alkane, and C(i)E(j), where the last represents n-alkyl polyglycol ether with i=4,6,10 and j=1,2,4). The x-ray measurements are analyzed with a two-parameter fit that determines the interfacial roughness, varying from 25 A to 160 A, and the interfacial tension, varying from 1.4 mN/m to 0.03 mN/m, for these samples. Although a nonmonotonic profile at the oil-microemulsion interface is not observed, these measurements exclude the presence of oscillating profiles with repeat distances greater then 500 A.