Studying surfactants adsorption on heterogeneous substrates

Publication date: March 2019Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering, Volume 23Author(s): Alberto StrioloSurface active compounds are continually designed and formulated to advance a large number of modern applications. In the past, the key design principle was the amount of surfactants adsorbed on a surface, because most attention was on changing the substrate wettability. As technology progresses, this is no longer sufficient, and the community is interested in preparing uniform surfactant films on a variety of substrates, typically characterised by surface roughness, both geometric and chemical. Much of our understanding on surfactant films is due to advanced experimental techniques that function best on chemically homogeneous atomically smooth surfaces. Simulations studies have also been conducted on similar substrates, often achieving results in apparent agreement with experimental observations. However, mounting evidence suggests that surface heterogeneity strongly affects the properties of adsorbed surfactant aggregates. To probe using computational approaches systems relevant for experimental investigations, one requires a combination of atomistic and coarse-grained approaches, both implemented using advanced algorithms. We discuss here a few possible approaches that could be used to study surfactant films adsorbed on heterogeneous surfaces, and how they could be combined with experimental investigations. Some recent trends that attempt to predict surfactant pe...

Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering - May 10, 2019 Category: Chemistry Source Type: research