Mixtures of sodium dodecyl sulfate/dodecanol at the air/water interface by computer simulations

Molecular dynamics simulations of monolayers of surfactant mixtures at the air/water interface were performed where the binary mixture was composed of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and dodecanol molecules. At the same ratio of SDS and dodecanol molecules, two monolayer mixtures were prepared. In the first monolayer, all the dodecanol molecules were placed together in the center of the simulation box, whereas in the second monolayer, those molecules were uniformly distributed in the surface area in such a way that they were far from each other. Simulations of both systems indicate that the dodecanol tails in the first monolayer are straighter and more ordered than those in the second monolayer. From the present results, we observed new insights of how the different molecules should array or distribute at the interface in real systems. Finally, studies of the interfacial water around the different surfactants were also analyzed, showing that they are closer to the polar headgroups of dodecanol than to the SDS headgroups.