ABSTRACT
One of the major areas of research in colloid science and interfacial engineering in the last quarter century has been the non-DLVO surface forces, such as depletion and structural forces, which affect structure formation and stability of colloidal dispersions. This chapter uses the microinterferometric method to investigate thin micellar film behavior. The effect of temperature was studied with nonionic surfactants in which the intermicellar repulsion is the result of stearic forces. Adding electrolytes to the surfactant solution, the number of stepwise transitions decreases, and the thinning process becomes irregular in that some of the steps are fused together. In order to study the effect of the polydispersity on the structural disjoining pressure, a model film system was studied, in which the particles were polydisperse, and size distribution followed the gaussian distribution. In order to find the particle structure inside the layers parallel to the film surfaces, the radial distribution function of the particles in a layer has been examined.
