Abstract
The visualization of the micellar morphological evolution for surfactant has drawn much attention due to its self-assemble ability to fold into various structures. However, the direct observation of the soft materials with low atomic number has been hampered because of the poor scattering contrast and complex staining process by the traditional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Herein, we reported a novel strategy to the visualization of surfactant micelles with the assistance of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) via TEM. Owing to the uniformly distributed metal ions and positive charges in the LDHs, the surfactant at the micelle-water interface reacted with LDHs to form a stabilized architecture through electrostatic and hydrogen-bond interactions. The morphologies of the surfactant can be clearly observed through the surfactant-LDHs architectures, exhibiting high contrast by TEM techniques. Significantly, the micellar evolutions involving the spherical, rodlike, and wormlike shapes were successfully distinguished. Our results may provide great possibilities and inspirations for the visualization for morphology of soft matters.
Highlights
Surfactant is a widely applied soft material which exhibits self-assemble ability to fold into micelles with various structures (Jain and Bates, 2003; Stano and Luisi, 2010; Liu et al, 2018)
We demonstrated the visualization of surfactant micelles with the assist of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) via traditional Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
The phenomenon was attributed to the presence of SHDAB monomers which preferred to adsorb at the water-air interface when the concentrations were below the critical micelle concentration (CMC)
Summary
Surfactant is a widely applied soft material which exhibits self-assemble ability to fold into micelles with various structures (Jain and Bates, 2003; Stano and Luisi, 2010; Liu et al, 2018). The studies of the morphology and structure for micelles have drawn increasing attention due to their great significance in biological and material science (Landsmann et al, 2010; Wang et al, 2013; Hu and Chou, 2014). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a valid technique widely applied to provide morphological aspects for visualization (Jung et al, 2003; O’Reilly et al, 2005; Honda et al, 2010). It is a topic of significance to realize the visualization for the morphological evolution of the micelles during the formation process
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