Monitoring the Transition from Spherical to Polymer-like Surfactant Micelles Using Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering

Despite over a century of modern surfactant science, the kinetic pathways of morphological transitions in micellar systems are still not well understood. This is mainly as a result of the lack of sufficiently fast methods that can capture the structural changes of such transitions. Herein, a simple surfactant system consisting of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in aqueous NaCl solutions is investigated. Combining synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) with fast stopped-flow mixing schemes allows monitoring the process where polymer-like micelles are formed from globular micelles when the salt concentration is suddenly increased. The results show that worm-like micelles are formed by fusion of globular micelles and short cylinders in a fashion that bears similarities to a step-like polymerization process.