ABSTRACT
The concept of microemulsions has been advanced into the area of nonaqueous systems. In these systems, water is replaced by a polar organic compound such as ethylene glycol, glycerol, or acetamide. This chapter reviews some of the progress in the research in nonaqueous micellar solutions, lamellar liquid crystals, microemulsions, and critical solutions. Microemulsions are transparent vehicles containing large amounts of both water and hydrocarbon. In a microemulsion, the hydrocarbon/water colloidal solution is commonly stabilized by a combination of an ionic surfactant and a medium chain length alcohol such as pentanol. The concept of microemulsions of hydrocarbons and polar organic substances such as ethylene glycol, glycerol formamide, and similar compounds was recently introduced by three groups independent of each other. The analysis of microemulsion phenomena has been restricted to the glycerol-sodium dodecyl sulfate-hexanol system which is similar to the corresponding aqueous system with butanol.
