Effect of Lateral Roughness On the Adsorption of Surfactants At Various Temperatures

Previous work by our group has shown that the effect of roughness on the adsorption of surfactants at room temperature increases the rate of adsorption at low times, and decreases the equilibrium adsorption and finally makes adsorption more sensitive total impurities near the critical micelle concentration.  In this study, we varied the temperature with both rough and flat surfaces in quartz crystal microbalance experiments for cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide and found that the adsorption decreased for the flat surfaces.  Results will be presented on the same experiments for rough surfaces.  We have also found that a common “high-purity” alcohol ethoxylate shows characteristics of poly(ethylene oxide) contamination, and we are currently developing a procedure to remove this component so we can study this molecule as well.