ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION THROUGH SEQUESTRATION IN SURFACTANT MICELLES FOLLOWED BY SEQUESTRATION IN MESOPOROUS MATERIALS

摘要

Above the critical micelle concentration, surfactant molecules self-assemble in water to form a variety of microstructures such as spheres, discs, biaxial ribbons, rods, lamellar bilayers or vesicles in dilute solutions. The microstructure is highly dependent on the nature of the surfactant molecules and can be predicted approximately by the value of the packing parameter g=V/a_o/, where V is the effective volume of the surfactant tail region, a_o, the effective headgroup area at the micelle surface and / the surfactant tail length. Small values of the packing parameter (g<1/3) typically lead to the spherical micelles, while at the other extreme (g>1) inverse micelles are formed. At intermediate values, cylindrical wormlike micelles, lamellar structures and vesicles are predicted.