ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns systems where the interaction between polymers and surfactants involves a binding of the surfactant onto the polymer. It considers polyelectrolytes of intermediate hydrophobicity where the hydrophobic microdomains may be extremely small or not present but are readily induced. Few experimental methods give access to the surfactant aggregation number in polymer/surfactant systems. Thus, conventional methods that are sensitive to the density of particles present in the system under investigation yield information on the polymer/surfactant complexes and not on the surfactant aggregates bound to the polymer. The chapter focuses on charged polymers of varying hydrophobicity. It examines various fluorescence probing methods for the determination of surfactant aggregation numbers, with particular emphasis on the conditions under which these methods yield valid results. A large number of studies have demonstrated the cooperativity in the binding of ionic surfactants to oppositely charged hydrophilic polyelectrolytes.
