Long wavelength undulations dominate dynamics in large surfactant membrane patches

By exposing microemulsions to small (80 nm diameter) and large (500 nm) disk shaped clay particles we were able to show the presence of long wavelength undulations that only occur for large membrane patches. A combination of small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and neutron spin echo (NSE) experiments have been applied to study microemulsions. These, consisting of D₂O, d-decane and the surfactant C₁₀E₄, were used in connection with Laponite (small) and Nanofil (large) clay. To our knowledge our experiments show for the first time that the clay platelets induce lamellar ordering adjacent to the clay discs in the otherwise bicontinuous microemulsion. This is due to the fact that in purely structural investigations, radial averaging smears out the signature of the lamellar phase. For thermodynamically fluctuating membranes near interfaces the theory of Seifert predicts a cross-over of the dispersion relationship from k² to a k³-dependence. With the correlation length of the membrane patches being confined by the dimension of the clay platelets we were able to show that this in fact takes place but is only present for the larger Nanofil particles.