A rippled defective phase of AOT lamella: A molecular dynamics study

Abstract

The sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate (AOT)/water lamellar systems have been subjected to detailed analysis using different techniques in order to reveal some unusual features of intermediate phase. Here, we attempted to study the intermediate region by molecular dynamics (MD) method and focused on some unanswered questions about the molecular arrangements, where, both, united-atom (UA) and all-atom (AA) approaches were used to compare data. It is stated that the anomalous effects at middle region of AOT concentration is due to curvative nature of bilayers and the presence of some structural defects, i.e. we track a rippled defective bilayer. Moreover, we track a rippled-induced bridge or link, which reduces water mobility.The main structural parameters were compared with existing experimental findings and in overall, the AA approach data comply well with experimental one.