Shear-Induced Structures in Concentrated Surfactant Micellar Phases

Constant and oscillatory Couette shear flow have been used in combination with small-angle neutron scattering to observe the shear-induced ordering in concentrated surfactant micellar phases. For the lamellar phase of hexaethylene glycol monohexadecyl ether, C₁₆E₆, two distinct lamellae orientations have been identified. At low shear gradients the lamellae are ordered parallel to the flow-vorticity plane, whereas at higher shear gradients the lamellae order parallel to the flow-shear gradient plane, corresponding to a rotation through 90° of the axis of orientation. At intermediate values of constant shear and for oscillatory shear, both lamellae orientations are simultaneously observed for the first time in a surfactant lamellar phase. For the lamellar phase, a dispersion of the binary surfactant mixtures of dioleyl cationic and 2-ethyl hexaglycerol monoether surfactants, a high degree of alignment, in the direction parallel to the flow-vorticity plane, is observed at zero and low shear. With time, during the application of a shear gradient of 25 s^-1, the lamellar phase transforms to a highly ordered solution of monodisperse multilamellar vesicles.