ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a particularly efficient class of surfactants, the amphiphiles. The study of micelles has been one of the big topics in simulations of systems with surfactants. Whereas microscopic models for bulk systems incorporate the amphiphilic character and often the orientational properties of the surfactants as basic ingredients, models for bilayers and monolayers are constructed to reproduce internal transitions, such as the gel–fluid transition, and concentrate on rather different aspects of the surfactant structure. Phenomenological models for amphiphilic systems can be divided into two big classes: Ginzburg–Landau models and random interface models. The basic idea of a Ginzburg–Landau theory is to describe the system by a set of spatially varying “order parameter” fields, typically combinations of densities. Langevin simulations of time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau models have also been performed to study other dynamical aspects of amphiphilic systems.
