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Phase behaviour and vesicle formation in catanionic mixtures of Na oleate and alkyl trimethyl ammonium bromide and its salt-free version

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Abstract

We have investigated catanionic mixtures of the anionic surfactant sodium oleate with various alkyltrimethyl ammonium bromides of different alkyl chain length between octyl and tetradecyl. Around equimolar mixing vesicles are formed but only for a chain length of decyl and longer. For shorter chains and with increasing asymmetry of the mixing ratio, the vesicle phase disappears and instead wormlike micelles are formed, which leads to a viscoelastic behaviour of the samples. The vesicle systems are often also viscoelastic, if they contain densely packed multi-lamellar vesicles but this depends also on their salt content, as for instance the salt-free decyl system forms unilamellar vesicles of low viscosity. It is observed that the most well-defined vesicles (unilamellar) occur upon admixing the intermediate cationic surfactant with the dodecyl chain, which then results in low viscous solutions. In general, by appropriately choosing the mixing ratio, the length of the alkyl chain and also the ionic strength of the solution can tune the structure and the properties of these catanionic surfactant mixtures over a wide range in a systematic fashion.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by DFG grant GR1030/6-1. The Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (LLB), Saclay, France is gratefully acknowledged for granting SANS beam time. For help with the SANS measurements, we are grateful to Julian Oberdisse and Markus Burkhardt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lehrstuhl für Physikalische Chemie I, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440, Bayreuth, Germany

    Ekramun Nabi

  2. Bayreuther Institut für Makromolekülforschung (BIMF), Laboratory for Soft Matter Electron Microscopy, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440, Bayreuth, Germany

    M. Drechsler

  3. Stranski-Laboratorium für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, D-10623, Berlin, Germany

    Ekramun Nabi & Michael Gradzielski

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  1. Ekramun Nabi
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Correspondence to Michael Gradzielski.

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Nabi, E., Drechsler, M. & Gradzielski, M. Phase behaviour and vesicle formation in catanionic mixtures of Na oleate and alkyl trimethyl ammonium bromide and its salt-free version. Colloid Polym Sci 293, 3119–3130 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-015-3737-y

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