Molecular Arrangement, Electronic Structure and Transport Properties in Surfactant Gel- and Related Systems Studied by Soft X-ray and Dielectric Spectroscopy

Sammanfattning: This thesis concerns studies of aqueous soft matter systems, especially surfactant micelle systems.The aim has been to study the molecular arrangement and electronic structure of the constituents of, as well as transport properties in such a system. The molecular arrangement and electronic structure has been studied by means of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and resonant inelastic X-ray spectroscopy (RIXS). The transport properties have been investigated by low-frequency dielectric spectroscopy (LFDS) and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) as well as a theoretical modelling. The latter was based on Fick’s laws of the release from binary surfactant system and was validated by experiments.The RIXS and XAS measurements show the electronic structure in bulk water and the influence of the chemical surrounding of the water molecule in bulk water and of the water molecules confined in a micelle lattice. The spectra are highly dependent on the molecular arrangement in such systems. For glycine and sodium polyacrylate RIXS and XAS spectra show features which are unique for carboxyl and carboxylate groups and such measurements can thus be used for fingerprinting.The LFDS and SAXS measurements show a strong correlation between structure in a surfactant/poly-ion system and apparent mobility of surfactants. This conclusion is in line with earlier observations.By the theoretical modelling a predictive model for the surfactant release from a binary surfactant micelle system has been obtained and the importance of different factors for surfactant release has been further clarified.