ABSTRACT
A variety of surfactants and lipids, when dissolved in water, are known to exhibit liquid-crystalline bicontinuous cubic phases which are part of a larger class of self-assembled structures that include micelles, microemulsions, vesicles, and other liquid-crystalline phases such as lamellar and hexagonal phases. In the lamellar phase, the restriction is limited only in the direction of the layer normal and the formed particles are free to move within the flat aqueous regions between lipid bilayers. The various microstructures into which lipids and surfactants self-assemble provide compartmentalized regions which can be used for the synthesis of fine particles. The uniformity in the size of the formed particles that have been able to achieve underscores the critical role played by the lipid matrix of the bicontinuous cubic phase. The general approach that was used to produce the palladium particles is a modified polyol process where the metal salt was reduced by the glyceride headgroup of the lipid, glycerol monooleate.
