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Science 9 September 1983:
Vol. 221. no. 4615, pp. 1047 - 1048
DOI: 10.1126/science.221.4615.1047
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Articles

Spontaneous Vesicles Formed from Hydroxide Surfactants: Evidence from Electron Microscopy

Y. TALMON 1, D. F. EVANS 2, and B. W. NINHAM 3

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
2 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455
3 Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, University of Minnesota

Dialkyldimethylammonium hydroxide surfactants are highly soluble in water and form spontaneous stable vesicles. These vesicles can be grown to size with added acid, and appear to provide an ideal membrane mimetic system for the study of fusion and ion transport. These phenomena are a consequence of strong hydration forces that are not necessarily limited to the hydroxide ions. The forces can be used to design a variety of model systems whose behavior differs from that of systems in which double-chained surfactants form insoluble liquid crystalline phases in water and unstable vesicle suspensions on prolonged sonication.

Submitted on June 20, 1983
Revised on July 11, 1983


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Spontaneous vesicle formation in aqueous mixtures of single-tailed surfactants.
E. Kaler, A. Murthy, B. Rodriguez, and J. Zasadzinski (1989)
Science 245, 1371-1374
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Polymerized Surfactant Vesicles: Novel Membrane Mimetic Systems.
J. H. Fendler (1984)
Science 223, 888-894
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The origins of stability of spontaneous vesicles.
H. T. Jung, B. Coldren, J. A. Zasadzinski, D. J. Iampietro, and E. W. Kaler (2001)
PNAS 98, 1353-1357
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