ABSTRACT
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One reason that surfactants are useful in a wide variety of applications is that, under suitable conditions, their aqueous solutions are able to dissolve substantial amounts of compounds that have very low solubilities in water. Similarly, surfactants can greatly increase the solubility of water and other polar compounds in hydrocarbons and other liquids of low polarity. This phenomenon, which involves incorporation of the solute by aggregates of surfactant molecules, is known as solubilization. It occurs not only for small surfactant aggregates such as (nearly) spherical micelles but also for larger aggregates such as microemulsion drops, vesicles, and cylindrical and platelike micelles. Lyotropic liquid crystals containing regular arrays of surfactant aggregates are also effective media for solubilization.
