The Effect of Different Polymer Length on Water Droplets of Reverse AOT microemulsion

Abstract

We study the effect of polyethylene glycol (PEG) on the dynamic and structure of water droplets at the reverse sodium bis-(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT) microemulsion. The mixture of water and oil with anionic surfactant AOT can form microemulsion. The dynamic of microemulsion in the presence of PEG is investigated by photon correlation spectroscopy technique. We mainly focus on the variation of the translational diffusion behaviour as a function of the polymer concentration and polymer length scale. By increasing the content of the lowest PEG length scale (Mn = 285), the dynamic of microemulsion slows down. In addition, one relaxation process is distinguished for all polymer concentration. However, for the two higher polymer length scale (Mn = 2200 and 6000), two relaxations are observed and the dynamic of microemulsion speeds up. We used the small angle X-ray scattering technique to monitor the size and the polydispersity of the mixture system (AOT microemulsion/PEG).