Who can explain the concept of microemulsion to me?

Microemulsion is an isotropic, transparent and thermodynamically stable dispersion system formed spontaneously by mixing water, oil, surfactant and cosurfactant in a proper proportion. Microemulsion was first discovered and named by Schulman and others. As a drug carrier, it has been paid attention to by the medical community since the 1980s, and the domestic research in this field has just started. It has been widely used in daily chemical industry, tertiary oil recovery, enzyme catalysis and other fields. Microemulsion not only has the general characteristics of emulsion, but also has the special advantages of small particle size, transparency and stability, which has been widely used in pharmaceutical preparations and clinic.

Microemulsion is a transparent or translucent, low viscosity, isotropic and thermodynamically stable oil-water mixed system formed spontaneously by water phase, oil phase, surfactant and cosurfactant in a proper proportion. Surfactants and cosurfactants play a stabilizing role together. Co-surfactants are usually short-chain alcohols, air or other weakly amphoteric compounds.

Microemulsion droplets can be oil swelling particles dispersed in water (O/W microemulsion) or water swelling particles dispersed in oil (W/O microemulsion) or disordered random structures. The phase behavior of microemulsion can be represented by a phase diagram, as shown in figure 1. Microemulsion is a single spherical droplet (0.0 1um), so the system has optical transparency. At this time, the droplets can be O/W type or W/O type, and in the middle area, the microemulsion has a bicontinuous structure. Microemulsions can exist in many equilibrium phases.

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