Dynamics of the "sponge" (L3) phase

The dynamics of the sponge structure of the L-3-phase in the ternary H2O-C10E4-n-decanol (C10E0) system has been examined. Temperature jump relaxation employing scattered-light detection, pressure jump with conductivity detection, time-resolved electric birefringence, and dynamic light scattering experiments were performed on the same system at varying surfactant volume fraction phi at constant temperature. The observed relaxations were all found to be single exponentials. The time constants tau (-1) obtained by these different methods vary over several orders of magnitude. They reveal in part rather strong dependencies on phi obeying effective scaling laws tau (-1) similar to phi (n), with n = 9 for the temperature and pressure jump relaxation and n 1 for dynamic birefringence yield n = 3. The origin of the various of passage formation, concentration fluctuations, deformation. light scattering. The time constants from electric exponents can theoretically be understood in terms and relaxation of shape anisotropy due to elastic deformation.