Surfactants in a Non-local Model for Phase Transitions

Abstract

We investigate the influence of surfactants on stabilizing the formation of interfaces in non-local anisotropic two-phase fluid at equilibrium. The analysis focuses on singularly perturbed non-local van der Waals-Cahn-Hillard-type energies, supplemented with a term that accounts for the interaction between the surfactant and the fluid. We derive by Gamma-convergence the effective surface tension model as the thickness of the transition layer vanishes and show that it decreases when the surfactant segregates to the interface.