Water motion in reverse micelles studied by quasielastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulations

The result of motion of water molecules in Aerosol OT reverse micelles (RM) with water content w ₀ was presented. The result explored experimentally through quasielectric neutron scattering (QENS) and with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The QENS analysis indicates that in RM with low water content translational diffusion rate is too slow to be detected, whereas for w ₀ =5 the diffussion coefficient is much smaller than for bulk water. MD simulations were performed to calculate the self-intermediate scattering function F _s (Q, t) for water hydrogens. The results show that water mobility in RMs is strongly w ₀ dependent and quite different from bulk water mobility.