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Highly viscoelastic reverse worm-like micelles formed in a lecithin/urea/oil system

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Abstract

While lecithin alone can form spherical or ellipsoidal reverse micelles in oil, we found that urea can promote the growth of lecithin reverse worm-like micelles in oil. In a mixed system of urea and lecithin, the urea binds to the phosphate group of lecithin, thus reducing the interface curvature of the molecular assembly and inducing the formation of reverse worm-like micelles. The regions in which these micelles form increased with lecithin concentration. In addition, the zero-shear viscosity (η 0) of the reverse worm-like micelles rapidly increased upon the addition of urea, reaching a maximum of 2 million times the viscosity of n-decane. We examined the change in η 0 in detail by performing dynamic viscoelasticity measurements. Values for η 0 increased with urea concentration because the disentanglement time of reverse worm-like micelles increased with micellar growth.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by the “High-Tech Research Center” project for private universities, a matching fund subsidy from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, 2007.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Pharmacy, Nihon University, 7-7-1 Narashinodai, Funabashi, Chiba, 274-8555, Japan

    Kaname Hashizaki, Takashi Chiba, Hiroyuki Taguchi & Yoshihiro Saito

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  1. Kaname Hashizaki
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  2. Takashi Chiba
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  3. Hiroyuki Taguchi
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  4. Yoshihiro Saito
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Correspondence to Kaname Hashizaki.

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Hashizaki, K., Chiba, T., Taguchi, H. et al. Highly viscoelastic reverse worm-like micelles formed in a lecithin/urea/oil system. Colloid Polym Sci 287, 927–932 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-009-2048-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-009-2048-6

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