Bending elasticity of charged surfactant layers: the effect of layer thickness

The bending properties of charged one-component surfactant films of finite thickness have been theoretically investigated. It is demonstrated that finite thickness effects are of crucial importance for layers formed by an ionic surfactant with a flexible hydrophobic tail, whereas the influence on layers formed by a surfactant with a rigid tail is less pronounced. As a matter of fact, in the former case, the spontaneous curvature and mean and Gaussian bending constants all become significantly modified as compared to an infinitely thin surface and assume identical values as if the surfactant layer were bent at constant layer thickness. As a result, the spontaneous curvature is found to decrease, whereas the magnitudes of the mean and Gaussian bending constants both increase with increasing layer thickness as well as with increasing hydrophobic-hydrophilic interfacial tension. All of these trends are consistent with experimental observations. In addition, it is demonstrated that separating the hydrophilic-hydrophobic interface and the surface of charge a certain distance from each other tends to increase the spontaneous curvature and the mean bending constant, whereas the Gaussian bending constant becomes increasingly negative. It is also found that the work of bending a bilayer into a geometrically closed vesicle is substantially raised to large positive values for surfactants with flexible aliphatic chains, whereas the corresponding quantity is negative for surfactants with rigid tails, indicating that stable bilayer structures may only be formed by the former surfactant. Furthermore, each of the bending elasticity constants for monolayers formed by a double-chain ionic surfactant are found to assume lower values as compared with layers formed by the corresponding single-chain surfactant.