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Topology, Length Scales and Energetics of Surfactant Micelles

We investigate the morphology and energetics of a self-associating model cationic surfactant in water using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. We develop an algorithm to track micelles contours and quantify various microstructural features, such as contour length, persistence length, mesh size, and entanglement-length. We demonstrate that branched and multiconnected structures govern the anomalous dependence of zero-shear viscosity on salt concentration. We predict reliably the end-cap energy of micelles, for the first time, from simulations.