Influences of shear and crystallising solutes on structure of surfactant-free microemulsions

Surfactant free microemulsions (or structured ternary fluids) have emerged in recent years as materials with great potential for providing the bespoke environments of microemulsions without requiring surfactants. As such these liquids may offer environmentally benign reaction media for many processes. To date, while there have been limited studies of their structure, these studies have not yet considered the influences of either shearing or dissolved components on the nanometre-scale domains that are important to their properties. Here we propose to explore these effects for a simple (octanol - ethanol - water) structured ternary fluid and for the first time study this system at compositions near the phase boundary while under shear and when loaded with model glycine solutes.