Aerosol OT reversed micelles as carrier agents

Abstract

Liquid-membrane techniques have been used to investigate the ability of AOT reversed micelles to behave as mobile carriers for transporting substances between two liquid–liquid interfaces. Potassium picrate was used for probing the transport process. The flux of picrate was measured in conditions where both the initial picrate concentration and the AOT droplet concentration were varied. Theoretical models for facilitated diffusion have been compared with the experimentally measured fluxes. They suggest that the transfer mechanism is different from that accounting for the data previously obtained with C₁₂EO₄/hexan-1-ol reversed micelles. The existence of a flux optimum when the AOT droplet concentration is varied is discussed in relation with clustering effects and percolation phenomena.