Shear quench-induced disintegration of a nonionic surfactant C10E3 onion phase

Abstract

The growth kinetics of a shear-induced onion structure in the nonionic surfactant C₁₀E₃ system after the shear quench is studied. In the small shear quench depth, the onion continuously grows up with a ripening behavior while discontinuous growth behavior is observed when the shear quench depth exceeds the threshold. In the discontinuous behavior, the initial onion first disintegrates into the planar lamellae, and then rebuilding of the new onion structure is achieved by L_α–onion transformation. We conclude that the driving force for the disintegration of the onion is the inhomogeneously stored bending energy at the edge of the polyhedral onion. The slow disintegration behavior observed for the stuffed onion with the colloidal particles indicates that the edges in the polyhedral onion are the origin of the instability after the shear quench.