Self-assembly of surfactant aqueous solution confined in a Janus amphiphilic nanotube

Abstract

In recent years, Janus amphiphilic nanotubes with complex surfaces have been synthesized. However, the self-assembly behaviour of surfactant solutions confined in a Janus amphiphilic nanotube has not been investigated so far. We performed molecular simulations to investigate the morphologies and phase diagrams of a surfactant confined in Janus amphiphilic nanotube consisting of both hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces. We derived a phase diagram of the representative snapshots of equilibrium morphologies. Morphologies that were not observed in the bulk eventuated in confined systems. Moreover, the self-assembled structures were found to be dependent on the spatial confinement. Furthermore, the self-assembled structures confined in hydroneutral and Janus amphiphilic nanotubes were compared. The results suggested that the self-assembled structures confined in the Janus amphiphilic nanotube resembled that confined in the hydroneutral nanotube owing to a strong confinement effect. Further developments in controlling the morphologies and self-assemblies will greatly advance their applications of these materials in nanofluidic devices, or for nanopatterning.

Keywords:

• Self-assembly
• Janus nanotube
• dissipative particle dynamics method
• confined system

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.