Electrophoretic mobility of the polymer-like micelles of tetradecyldimethylamine oxide hemihydrochloride

Effects of the surfactant concentration Cd and the NaCl concentration Cs on the electrophoretic mobilities U of the well-characterized polymer-like micelles have been investigated by the electrophoretic light scattering, using tetradecyldimethylamine oxide hemihydrochloride (C14DMAO·1/2HCl). At the high ionic strength of 0.1 mol kg−1 NaCl, the electrophoretic mobilities were independent of Cd (5 mM < Cd < 100 mM), despite the concentration-dependent micelle growth of the polymer-like micelles. This suggests that the electrophoretic mobility of the polymer-like micelle at high ionic strengths is independent of the contour length (i.e., the molecular weight), as found on linear polyelectrolytes. Somewhat surprisingly, the entanglements of the polymer-like micelles gave small effect on the electrophoretic mobilities in the examined range of the surfactant concentration above an overlap concentration. The mobilities of the polymer-like micelle decreased with √Cs in a single exponential manner in the range of Cs from 0.02 to 0.3 mol kg−1. It is suggested that the cylinder model can be applied to the electrophoretic mobilities of the polymer-like micelles at high ionic strengths (i.e. a free-draining behavior), since the persistence length of the polymer-like micelle (∼20 nm) is much larger than the Debye length at high ionic strength.