(62c) Some Effects of Surface Heterogeneity on the Morphology of Surfactant Self-Assembled Aggregates

Surfactants are ubiquitous chemicals in academia, industry, and consumer products. Just in the oil and gas industry, these compounds can be used for enhanced oil recovery and environmental remediation strategies. In consumer-care products, surfactants find wide use in soaps, shampoos, and many other products. Fundamental investigations have been focused on surfactants for many years, not only because self-assembling systems present a number of questions that are intrinsically interesting, but also for the expected positive impacts in a variety of industrial sectors, including nanotechnology and drug delivery. However, most studies have concentrated on homogeneous systems, either in the bulk, or at contact with pristine surfaces. A number of recent discoveries suggest that perhaps the behavior of surfactants on heterogeneous surfaces differs compared to that expected based on results obtained on homogeneous substrates. In this presentation we will present recent results obtained using multiple computational strategies to unveil the effects of heterogeneous surface properties on the morphology of self-assembled surfactant aggregates. We will also discuss how our results can be explained by an expression for the system free energy that accounts for the elastic deformation of the self-assembled surfactant film.