Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Properties of Surfactant Membranes : Vesicles and Lamellar Phases in Nonionic Surfactants

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the study of lamellar systems, both the classical lamellar phase of planar sheets, and systems where the bilayer sheets fold to form a closed structures such as multilamellar vesicles. In this work a systematic study of a dynamic phase diagram at low temperature and a structural analysis along an isoplethal line has been performed. MLVs were prepared with different procedures and their stability analyzed at different temperature. Additionaly, several techniques were used to verify the presence of structural defects in the lamellae at low temperature.