The effect of the surfactant chain length n on the bending modulus kappa of surfactant monolayers is simulated with a mesoscopic oil-water-surfactant model. We confirm a power law, kappa is proportional to np, as predicted by mean-field theory and found experimentally, and find p approximately 1.5 at a constant surface density and p approximately 1.0 at a constant interfacial tension. This agre...

We study the destabilization mechanism of thin liquid sheets expanding in air and show that dilute oil-in-water emulsion-based sheets disintegrate through the nucleation and growth of holes that perforate the sheet. The velocity and thickness fields of the sheet outside the holes are not perturbed by holes, and hole opening follows the Taylor-Culick law. We find that a prehole, which widens and...

Using field theoretic renormalization, an MBE-type growth process with an obliquely incident influx of atoms is examined. The projection of the beam on the substrate plane selects a "parallel" direction, with rotational invariance restricted to the transverse directions. Depending on the behavior of an effective anisotropic surface tension, a line of second-order transitions is identified, as w...

a bacterial strain (designated as alcaligenes sp. ms-103) isolated from oil sample of the aghajari oilfield in the south of iran, was able to produce an effective extracellular lipopolysaccharide biosurfactant (1.2±0.05 g/l) on molasses as a sole carbon source. the highest surface tension reduction to level 20 mn/m was achieved by biosurfactant produced by cells grown on molasses under optimum ...

A comparison is made between two models of homogeneous nucleation and droplet growth. The first is a kinetic model yielding the master equations for the concentrations of molecular clusters. Such a model does not make an explicit distinction between nucleation and droplet growth. The second model treats nucleation and growth separately, fully ignoring stochastic effects, and leads to the contin...

The (31)P-nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shift of phosphatidic acid in a membrane is sensitive to the lipid head group packing and can report qualitatively on membrane lateral compression near the aqueous interface. We have used high-resolution (31)P-nuclear magnetic resonance to evaluate the lateral compression on each side of asymmetrical lipid vesicles. When monooleoylphosphatidylcholin...

Surface tension-driven self-alignment is a passive and highly-accurate positioning mechanism that can significantly simplify and enhance the construction of advanced microsystems. After years of research, demonstrations and developments, the surface engineering and manufacturing technology enabling capillary self-alignment has achieved a degree of maturity conducive to a successful transfer to ...