Computer simulations of wormlike micelles

Abstract

Amphiphilic molecules may self-assemble in a great variety of morphological structures. A convenient parameter, which quantifies the importance of the molecular structure, is the packing parameter, where v is the volume of the hydrophobic tail of the amphiphile, is the area occupied by its hydrophilic head group, and the length of its tail. In dilute solutions micellar structures tend to be spherical for values of the packing parameter around 1/3 and rodlike when is close to 1/2.