Observation of a Topological Relaxation Mode in Microemulsions

Peter, U and Roux, D and Sood, AK (2001) Observation of a Topological Relaxation Mode in Microemulsions. In: Physical Review Letters, 86 (15). pp. 3340-3343.

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Abstract

We report the observation of two diffusive relaxation modes in a very swollen microemulsion, measured by quasielastic light scattering experiments. In addition to a short-time diffusion process, we observe a long-time diffusive relaxation mode with unusual scaling behavior: the diffusion constant D is an exponential function of the characteristic length scale , D exp(– ). This observation provides experimental evidence for thermally activated topological relaxation of random fluid phases, as predicted by Milner et al. [J. Phys. (Paris) 51, 2629 (1990)]. We describe the activation energy of such a process by some simple microscopic model for the surfactant layer and give an estimation of the membrane elastic and Gaussian moduli and , and its spontaneous curvature.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review Letters
Publisher:	American Physical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to American Physical Society (APS)
Keywords:	microemulsions;topology;swelling;diffusion;scaling phenomena
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	26 Jul 2004
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:14
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/1188

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