On the stability of microemulsions. II

Abstract

In literature, the stability of microemulsions has been attributed to the existence of a natural curvature as well as a bending energy of the saturated amphiphilic monolayers separating the polar and the nonpolar solvents. Alternatively, it has been suggested recently seeing the reason for the stability in the steep rise of the interfacial tension as soon as the interfacial layers become unsaturated. In this paper, we compare the predictions of the latter model with respect to the stability limits in ternary water–oil–nonionic amphiphile mixtures at temperatures below and above the three‐phase interval. The agreement between theory and experiment is reasonable.