Alignment of Charge Density Waves in Binary Complex Fluids and a Surfactant

Electrolytes involving polar/non-polar components and ions have wide-spread applications as electrolytes in batteries and fuel / electrolyser cells. The dynamics and diffusion constants of all the different components are usually connected to the transport coefficients that determine the maximum current in the application [1]. The structure of the domains provides a fundamental understanding of the transport properties [1], but also is highly interesting for the academic understanding of such systems. Close to the phase boundary of miscibility, strong composition fluctuations may develop [1,2]. Here, the Ising criticality comes into play, that responds to the arrangement of the ions (of the surfactant or antagonistic salt). Charge density waves are usually formed with a locally lamellar character, and so the binary fluid is confined to 2 dimensions. However, the high-Q small-angle scattering reveals also the influence of the third missing dimension [2], and so an orientational average of 2-dimensional confinement and the third dimension is observed. To deconvolute the averaging of the scattering in different directions we propose to orient the domains of the composition fluctuations in an external magnetic field and observe them using small angle neutron scattering on LAMOR.