2004 -03 -17
10 :15 at ML J 21

Surfactant Cubic Phases

Asja Jelic

Polymer Physics, Dept. Materials Science, ETH Zurich

Surfactant molecules, due to their amphiphilic nature, are capable of stabilizing interfaces between two immiscible liquids such as oil and water. The geometric features of these surfactant sheets that form the interface between the immiscible bulk components depend on the composition and temperature. A rich phase behavior is often exhibited by such systems and one of the nonlamellar surfactant phases that is of great interest, from a scientific and from an industrial point of view, is the so-called cubic phase. In this talk elementary description of the surfactant cubic phases will be presented as well as overview of some results of the recent studies of their phase behavior, structure and rheology.