Electron and optical microscopy study of the lamellar mesophase region of the water/sodium octanoate/decanol ternary system

Abstract

The mesophase regions of the water/sodium octanoate/decanol ternary system, termed by Ekwall and his coworkers B, C and D, together with the intermediate regions, have been studied with electron microscopy (freeze–fracture–etch) and varied optical microscopy techniques. The differences between the previously designated phase regions of Ekwall and collaborators are more readily explicable in terms of a gradual alteration in the morphology of a single mesophase (lamellar) with composition rather than by a fundamental structural change in the liquid-crystalline phase itself. This view is in accord with recent n.m.r. measurements.