The Surfactant‐Block Structure of Micelles, Synthesis of the Droplet and of the Bilayer Concept

The experimental data concerned with the molecular structure of surfactant micelles are considered. A consistent rationalization of the observations is not attained by the conventional ideas of packing: The droplet‐model describes the thermodynamical data, the bilayer‐fragment model the structural data. A new packing mode is suggested which combines the features of those two models: The parallel correlation of the molecules is limited to a range corresponding to the length of the molecules. An isometric compact assembly is attained which provides a consistent description of the pertinent experimental data. The principle of block‐assembly is applied to the construction of narrow curvatures made from amphiphilic molecules as in liquid crystals, microemulsions and lipidmembranes.