Microemulsions and electron microscopy

Abstract

SUMMARY The replicas obtained from various microemulsions prepared under different freezing conditions were observed by electron microscopy. The difficulties encountered in obtaining proper freezing may be related to the peculiar properties of such systems. A proposal is made for using systems with particular physical characteristics, which preserve the micellar structure during freezing, instead of looking for perfect freezing conditions. This proposal proved to be successful.

Preferential solubilization of dodecanol from dodecanol–limonene binary oil mixture in sodium dihexyl sulfosuccinate microemulsions: Effect on optimum salinity and oil solubilization capacity

“…The pseudophase theory [13,45] is utilized to define phases α and β and the surface σ . The microemulsion, which is a macroscopically single-phase system, can be divided into three subphases: (1) the water pseudophase, α, (2) the oil pseudophase, β, and (3) the interface, or C-layer, σ .…”

Effect of Interfacial Alcohol Concentrations on Oil Solubilization by Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate Micelles

“…Several methods have been used to measure this partition coefficient (22,23), but these methods either require special instrumentation or can only measure the partition coefficient at low alcohol concentrations. Another method uses a "pseudophase" model to describe alcohol partitioning among oil, aqueous, and interfacial phases in microemulsion systems (24)(25)(26)(27). Figure 1 is a schematic description of the concepts embodied in the pseudophase model.…”

Polymer applications

“…Biais et al [366] applied the method of freeze replication to show the micellar morphology by TEM. These authors used Freon 22 to fast freeze the microemulsion by methods already described (Section 4.9.4).…”