Temperature Effect on Micelle Formation: Molecular Thermodynamic Model Revisited

Temperature affects the aggregation of macromolecules such as surfactants, polymers, and proteins in aqueous solutions. The effect on the critical micelle concentration (CMC) is often nonmonotonic. In this work, the effect of temperature on the micellization of ionic and nonionic surfactants in aqueous solutions is studied using a molecular thermodynamic model. Previous studies based on this technique have predicted monotonic behavior for ionic surfactants. Our investigation shows that the choice of tail transfer energy to describe the hydrophobic effect between the surfactant tails and the polar solvent molecules plays a key role in the predicted CMC. We modify the tail transfer energy by taking into account the effect of the surfactant head on the neighboring methylene group. The modification improves the description of the CMC and the predicted micellar size for aqueous solutions of sodium n-alkyl sulfate, dodecyl trimethylammonium bromide (DTAB), and n-alkyl polyoxyethylene. The new tail transfer energy describes the nonmonotonic behavior of CMC versus temperature. In the DTAB-water system, we redefine the head size by including the methylene group, next to the nitrogen, in the head. The change in the head size along with our modified tail transfer energy improves the CMC and aggregation size prediction significantly. Tail transfer is a dominant energy contribution in micellar and microemulsion systems. It also promotes the adsorption of surfactants at fluid-fluid interfaces and affects the formation of adsorbed layer at fluid-solid interfaces. Our proposed modifications have direct applications in the thermodynamic modeling of the effect of temperature on molecular aggregation, both in the bulk and at the interfaces.