Theoretical Study of Phase Transition Behaviour in Mixed Biopolymer + Surfactant Interfacial Layers Using the Self-Consistent-Field Approach - Food Colloids: Self-Assembly and Material Science - page 250

Figure 1 The variation of the volume fraction of segments belonging to surfactant
molecules in the layer in direct contact with the solid surface, G c , plotted as a
function of the volume fraction of the surfactant in the bulk solution. The solid
and the dashed lines indicate the stable and metastable values of G c , respec-
tively. The number of biopolymer chains at the interfacial region is kept fixed at
a value of 0.005 chains per unit monomer area (a 0 )
Figure 2 As Figure 1, but now showing the variation of the volume fraction of the
segments belonging to the biopolymer chains, G c , in contact with the surface
chain sizes, and other system-dependent parameters. The important feature
required is the presence of a reasonably strong degree of incompatibility
between polymer and surfactant species. Of course, the exact threshold values
for the occurrence of the abrupt change, as seen in Figures 1 and 2, does depend
on the precise values of the chosen parameters.