Tuneable interfacial surfactant aggregates mimic lyotropic phases and facilitate large scale nanopatterningShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Nanoscale, ISSN 2040-3364, E-ISSN 2040-3372, Vol. 13, no 1, p. 371-379Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
It is shown that the air-liquid interface can be made to display the same rich curvature phenomena as common lyotropic liquid crystal systems. Through mixing an insoluble, naturally occurring, branched fatty acid, with an unbranched fatty acid of the same length, systematic variation in the packing constraints at the air-water interface could be obtained. The combination of atomic force microscopy and neutron reflectometry is used to demonstrate that the water surface exhibits significant tuneable topography. By systematic variation of the two fatty acid proportions, ordered arrays of monodisperse spherical caps, cylindrical sections, and a mesh phase are all observed, as well as the expected lamellar structure. The tuneable deformability of the air-water interface permits this hitherto unexplored topological diversity, which is analogous to the phase elaboration displayed by amphiphiles in solution. It offers a wealth of novel possibilities for the tailoring of nanostructure
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Royal Society of Chemistry , 2021. Vol. 13, no 1, p. 371-379
Keywords [en]
Air, Atomic force microscopy, Fatty acids, Lamellar structures, Liquid crystals, Topography, Air liquid interfaces, Air water interfaces, Atomic Force Microscopy and Neutron Reflectometry, Interfacial surfactants, Lyotropic liquid crystal, Naturally occurring, Packing constraints, Systematic variation, Phase interfaces
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-52018DOI: 10.1039/d0nr06621dScopus ID: 2-s2.0-85099240874OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-52018DiVA, id: diva2:1522656
Note
Funding details: Vetenskapsrådet, VR, VR 2013-04384; Funding details: Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences, CeNS; Funding text 1: We thank the ILL for the provision of neutron beam time on FIGARO (DOI:10.5291/ILL-DATA.9-10-1487 and 10.5291/ ILL-DATA.9-10-1515), and ANSTO for the provision of XRR beam time on Platypus (Proposal: P6419). M. R. and E. B. acknowledge support from the Swedish Research Council via grant VR 2013-04384. P. M. B. acknowledges funding from the Excellence Cluster Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM) and the Center for NanoScience (CeNS). We thank Deborah Wakeham, Anna Oleshkevych, Adrian Rennie, and Philippe Fontaine for useful discussions.
2021-01-262021-01-262023-05-25Bibliographically approved