Equilibrium Onions?
Soft Condensed Matter
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
We demonstrate the possibility of a stable equilibrium multi-lamellar (``onion'') phase in pure lamellar systems (no excess solvent) due to a sufficiently negative Gaussian curvature modulus. The onion phase is stabilized by non-linear elastic moduli coupled to a polydisperse size distribution (Apollonian packing) to allow space-filling without appreciable elastic distortion. This model is compared to experiments on copolymer-decorated lamellar surfactant systems, with reasonable qualitative agreement.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0407021,
title = {Equilibrium Onions?},
author = {L. Ramos and D. Roux and P. D. Olmsted and M. E. Cates},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0407021},
year = {2007}
}