Reflectometry Reveals Accumulation of Surfactant Impurities at Bare Oil/Water Interfaces.

ABSTRACT: Bare interfaces between water and hydrophobic media like air or oil are of fundamental scientific interest and of great relevance for numerous applications. A number of observations involving water/hydrophobic interfaces have, however, eluded a consensus mechanistic interpretation so far. Recent theoretical studies ascribe these phenomena to an interfacial accumulation of charged surfactant impurities in water. In the present work, we show that identifying surfactant accumulation with X-ray reflectometry (XRR) or neutron reflectometry (NR) is challenging under conventional contrast configurations because interfacial surfactant layers are then hardly visible. On the other hand, both XRR and NR become more sensitive to surfactant accumulation when a suitable scattering length contrast is gen

SUBMITTER: Scoppola E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6891303 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature