Surfactant-free oil/water and bicontinuous microemulsion composed of benzene,ethanol and water

• Published in: Chinese chemical letters Vol. 21; no. 7; pp. 880 - 883
• Main Authors: Song, Fei, Xu, Jie, Hou, Wan Guo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.07.2010; Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry of Education Ministry,Shandong University,Jinan 250100,China%College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering,Qingdao University of Science and Technology,Qingdao 266042,China%Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry of Education Ministry,Shandong University,Jinan 250100,China; College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering,Qingdao University of Science and Technology,Qingdao 266042,China
• Subjects: Conductivity; FF-TEM; Phase behavior; Surfactant-free microemulsion; 传统表面活性剂; 冷冻蚀刻透射电子显微镜; 助表面活性剂; 微乳液; Surfactant-free microemulsion; Conductivity; Phase behavior; FF-TEM
• ISSN: 1001-8417; 1878-5964
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cclet.2010.01.029

Generally,a microemulsion consists of oil,water,surfactant and sometimes cosurfactant.Herein,we report a novel suffactant-free microemulsion（denoted as SFME） composed of benzene,water and ethanol without the amphiphilic molecular structure of traditional surfactant.The phase behavior of the ternary system was investigated,finding that there were a single-phase region and a two-phase region in ternary phase diagram.The electrical conductivity measurement was employed to investigate the microregion of the single-phase region,and a bicontinuous microregion and a benzene-in-water（O/W） microemulsion microregion were identified,which was confirmed by freeze-fracture transmission electron microscopy（FF-TEM） observations.The sizes of the microemulsion droplets are in the range of 20-50 nm.