Abstract
Microemulsions are oil and water dispersions stabilised by the presence of a surfactant and a co-surfactant /1/. Often, the co-surfactant is a short chain alcohol such as butanol or pentanol. Microemulsions frequently exist over a wide range of oil and water volume fractions. At low volume fractions of either oil or water, the structure of the optically isotropic phase has been shown to consist of a dispersion of droplets of oil or water surrounded by an interfacial layer of surfactant and co-surfactant /2,3/. The size of these droplets may vary from about 50 /A/ to several hundred /A/. In many cases it is possible, by changing the relative amounts of oil and water, to effect a continuous change from an oil-in-water microemulsion to a water-in-oil microemulsion. Moreover this transition occurs in a gradual manner without any abrupt change in the properties or the behavior of the microemulsion. This raises the question of the structure of the microemulsion when there are equal amounts of oil and water and the mechanism of the structural inversion.
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