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PreprintCC BYChemRxiv

An Affinity-Based Model for Competitive Surfactant Adsorption in Microemulsions

  • Jackson Elowitt1,2
  • Swarup Banerjee1,2
  • Aurora E. Clark1,2
  1. 1Department of Chemistry
  2. 2University of Utah
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Abstract

Mixtures of different surfactants are widely employed in microemulsions to tune aggregate stability, selectivity for solute incorporation (as part of separations), and phase behavior. Yet predicting how competing surfactants partition between the aggregate surface and the bulk medium remains an unsolved challenge. We introduce the affinity , a size-independent measure of polar-core coverage that is well-defined across polydisperse aggregates, and derive an affinity-based competitive Langmuir model from the grand canonical partition function. For TODGA/TBP in n-dodecane the model yields ΔΔGads. = -0.84 ± 0.04 kcal/mol favoring TBP and partitions it into an energetic term of -1.10 ± 0.04 kcal/mol and an entropic term of -0.84 ± 0.13 cal/mol K, the latter obtained from single-component simulations alone.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{elowitt2026affinitybased,
  title = {{An Affinity-Based Model for Competitive Surfactant Adsorption in Microemulsions}},
  author = {Jackson Elowitt and Swarup Banerjee and Aurora E. Clark},
  howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15003417/v2},
  url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15003417/v2},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - An Affinity-Based Model for Competitive Surfactant Adsorption in Microemulsions
AU  - Jackson Elowitt
AU  - Swarup Banerjee
AU  - Aurora E. Clark
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/28
PB  - ChemRxiv
DO  - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15003417/v2
UR  - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15003417/v2
AB  - Mixtures of different surfactants are widely employed in microemulsions to tune aggregate stability, selectivity for solute incorporation (as part of separations), and phase behavior. Yet predicting how competing surfactants partition between the aggregate surface and the bulk medium remains an unsolved challenge. We introduce the affinity , a size-independent measure of polar-core coverage that is well-defined across polydisperse aggregates, and derive an affinity-based competitive Langmuir model from the grand canonical partition function. For TODGA/TBP in n-dodecane the model yields ΔΔGads. = -0.84 ± 0.04 kcal/mol favoring TBP and partitions it into an energetic term of -1.10 ± 0.04 kcal/mol and an entropic term of -0.84 ± 0.13 cal/mol K, the latter obtained from single-component simulations alone.
ER  -