PHASE TRANSITIONS IN BINARY SYSTEMS IN THE PRESENCE OF AMPHIPHILIC MOLECULES

Immiscible binary mixtures containing surfactants, which lower the interfacial tension, show rich phase behaviors. Equilibrium features as well as dynamical aspects of such systems have been extensively investigated and are briefly reviewed in this article emphasizing our own works. Our works described here are concerned with the development of the hybrid model in which a binary mixture is treated as a continuum and surfactants as discrete molecules. The case of block copolymers as surfactants is also discussed from the hybrid point of view.