Causes and Consequences of Spontaneous Vesicle Formation

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The PI's recently discovered spontaneous, monodisperse, equilibrium vesicles in many mixtures of anionic and cationic surfactants. In this program, they will characterize experimentally and model theoretically the process of vesicle formation in these systems. This work will uncover a rich new area of surfactant phase behavior and suggest new formations for stable vesicles useful in addressing theoretical and practical problems. They will use a combination of experimental techniques including light, x-ray and neutron scattering, fluorescent probes, rheological measurements, and electron microscopy. Simultaneously they will approach the problem from two distinct and complementary theoretical directions. This work is significant because the properties of vesicles in these mixtures and the nature of the micelle- vesicle and vesicle-liquid crystal transitions is of keen scientific interest and considerable practical importance. This project has a broad scope and in order to achieve these goals expeditiously they will collaborate with several industrial and academic researchers.