Kinetics of phase separation and coarsening in dilute surfactant pentaethylene glycol monododecyl ether solutions

Tanaka Shinpei

Kubo Y.

Yokoyama Y.

Toda Akihiko

Taguchi Ken

Kajioka Hiroshi

Journal of Chemical Physics

We investigated the phase separation phenomena in dilute surfactant pentaethylene glycol monodedecyl ether (C12E5) solutions focusing on the growth law of separated domains. The solutions confined between two glass plates were found to exhibit the phase inversion, characteristic of the viscoelastic phase separation; the majority phase (water-rich phase) nucleated as droplets and the minority phase (micelle-rich phase) formed a network temporarily, then they collapsed into an usual sea-island pattern where minority phase formed islands. We found from the real-space microscopic imaging that the dynamic scaling hypothesis did not hold throughout the coarsening process. The power law growth of the domains with the exponent close to 1/3 was observed even though the coarsening was induced mainly by hydrodynamic flow, which was explained by Darcy's law of laminar flow.

Chemistry [ 430 ]

eng

American Institute of Physics

Copyright 2011 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.

[ISSN] 0021-9606

[DOI] 10.1063/1.3668349

[NCID] AA00694991

[DOI] http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3668349