In this work, we study the effect of grafted PEO-dodecyl co-polymers on the decane/water microemulsions properties. For this purpose, we combined the MD simulations, the OZ integral equations resolved using the HNC closure, and SANS experiments.

We studied the sol/gel transition of oil/water microemulsion (O/W-MI) covered with dodecyl–(polyEthylene oxide)227–dodecyl triblock copolymer.

The structural properties of neutral oil-in-water (O/W) microemulsions nanodroplets in the presence of telechelic polymers PEO modified with two hydrophobic end functions (PEO- 2m) were studied by Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS). We show that the unknown attractive interaction introduced by the addition of PEO-2m, can could be balanced by a known repulsion interaction due to the addition of a cationic surfactant Cp +, which causes a progressive transformation of the bridges connecting the nanodroplets into loops. For this, we compute the structure factor S(q) with an effective pair potential, using the Ornstein Zernicke (OZ) integral equation approach with the Hypernetted Chain (HNC) closure relation. Generally, the agreement between the neutron scattering spectra and the numerical study is reasonable and allows a detailed description for each sample.

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Correction for ‘Effect of hydrophobically modified PEO polymers (PEO-dodecyl) on oil/water microemulsion properties: in vitro and in silico investigations’ by M. Khatouri et al., RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 7059–7069, DOI: 10.1039/D0RA09804C.