Ref HAL: hal-01934607_v1
DOI: 10.1140/epje/i2015-15052-1
WoS: 000356329700001
Exporter : BibTex | endNote
Résumé:

We use dynamic light scattering to investigate the effects of charge polydispersity and chargeresidence time on the dynamics of a micellar system. While in the corresponding uncharged system onlyone exponential relaxation is observed, two relaxation modes are seen when charging the micelles byadding charged co-surfactant molecules with a long residence time. We attribute the existence of thesetwo relaxation modes to the combined effect of size polydispersity and charge polydispersity, i.e. frozenfluctuations of the number of charges per micelle. Further support to this scenario is provided by controlexperiments on a similar charged system, but where the charge residence time is short compared to thetime scales probed by dynamic light scattering. Here, charge polydispersity is effectively suppressed dueto the rapid exchange of charged molecules between micelles and only one single relaxation mode is seen,thereby demonstrating the key role of frozen charge fluctuations in the complex dynamics of our micellarsystem.