ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments........................................................................... 238 References....................................................................................... 238
We present an overview of applications of NMR to bicontinuous cubic and sponge phases. Our point of departure is a historical account
of how the concept of bicontinuity evolved in self-assembly systems. We introduce the NMR method and discuss the NMR approaches that are suitable for obtaining information about bicontinuous phases. In particular, we stress the use of NMR relaxation and NMR diffusion data as suitable in this context. Examples of applications of these approaches are then given, and we outline how relaxation data as a function of phase composition and also Larmor frequency at one particular composition may be interpreted. Finally, we present diffusion data for both sponge phases and cubic phases and point out that such data imply a close similarity in the microstructure of the ordered cubic and disordered sponge phase.
