Ultrasonic relaxation associated with a water exchange process in concentrated surfactant solutions and lyotropic liquid crystals

Abstract

Ultrasonic relaxation measurements on a variety of surfactant solutions in the micellar and liquid crystalline phases show a relaxation process whose width is slightly broader than that expected for a single relaxation time, the origin of which is attributed to a pertubation of an equilibrium involving ‘bound’ and ‘free’ water molecules; in the vicinity of the boundaries which separate different phases of the surfactant solutions, an additional relaxation process has been observed.