Effects of organic solvents on the scission energy of rodlike micelles.

The linear viscoelastic response of erucyl bis(hydroxyethyl) methylammonium chloride with added KCl has been studied as a function of temperature and nonpolar solvent addition. The plateau modulus is independent of temperature from 25 to 40 degrees C, in contrast to previous studies with salicylate counterions that showed a plateau modulus increasing with temperature over this range. The average micelle length, L, predicted by the model of Cates, depends experimentally on Escis/kBT, where Escis is the scission energy of the chain and kBT is the Boltzmann constant times the absolute temperature.