Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Gelation

Grow with the flow

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 381–382 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

So far, flow-induced transitions and structures formed by the assembly of surfactant micelles have been reversible. Now, a microporous extensional flow process forms a permanent gel, which remains intact even after flow has stopped.

Soap has been used since the earliest recorded history. However, its active ingredient — surfactant molecules — was not termed as such until the 1950s. Since this time, the science of surfactants has been studied intensely because of fundamental interest and because of their widespread use in high-value applications such as detergents, personal care products, pharmaceuticals and oil recovery. Despite this extensive and productive history, the surfactant molecule still manages to surprise us. Writing in Nature Materials, Sureshkumar and co-workers1 report a new mechanism for the flow-induced formation of irreversible gels in a surfactant system. Their discovery challenges our understanding of the formation and stability of surfactant phases and may have implications in various applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: A schematic of a spherical micelle of surfactant molecules in aqueous solution.
Figure 2: The formation of a permanent gel, made up of a network of micelles, using a microfluidic porous-medium technique.

References

  1. Vasudevan, M. et al. Nature Mater. 9, 436–441 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Turner, M. S. & Cates, M. E. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 4, 3719–3741 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Shenoy, A. V. Colloid Polym. Sci. 262, 319–337 (1984).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Sureshkumar, R., Beris, A. N. & Handler, R. A. Phys. Fluids 9, 743–755 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Sierro, P. & Roux, D. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1496–1499 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Rehage, H., Wunderlich, I. & Hoffman, H. Prog. Colloid. Polym. Sci. 72, 51–59 (1986).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Ketner, A. M., Kumar, R., Davies, T. S., Elder, P. W. & Raghavan, S. R. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 1553–1559 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Meleson, K., Graves, S. & Mason, T. G. Soft Mater. 2, 109–123 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Matteo Pasquali is in the Departments of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry, Lovett College, The Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, The Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, Rice University, MS 362, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005, USA. mp@rice.edu,

    Matteo Pasquali

Authors
  1. Matteo Pasquali
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pasquali, M. Grow with the flow. Nature Mater 9, 381–382 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2761

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2761

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing