Structural order and dynamics at water/hydrocarbon and water/surfactant interfaces

COMP 71

Branka M. Ladanyi, bl@lamar.colostate.edu and Janamejaya Chowdhary, janamej@lamar.colostate.edu. Department of Chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1872
We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations of water/hydrocarbon liquid-liquid interfaces and of models for aqueous reverse micelles, i.e., water-in-oil microemulsions. In the first set of systems, the effects of hydrocarbon branching and chain length on the structural order and interfacial dynamics of both phases were studied. In the case of reverse micelles, we are using atomistic surfactant models in order to investigate fluctuations in the shape and size of the enclosed aqueous nanodrops and penetration of water molecules into the surfactant layer. Our results and their connections to experiments which probe interfacial structure and dynamics will be discussed.