A study on time-concentration superposition of dilatational modulus and foaming behavior of sodium alkyl sulfate.

The oscillatory dilatational flow of interfacial rheology is a useful tool to unveil the motion of molecules and the interaction between adsorbed molecules at the interfacial layers. Despite its usefulness, it is difficult to analyze the dilatational moduli because they are functions of both the frequency and concentration. In this study, we adopted superposition behavior to investigate the diffusive transport of sodium alkyl sulfate surfactant based on the interfacial rheology under oscillatory dilatational flow. We found that the time-concentration superposition is valid for dynamic dilatational moduli. The shifting factors for superposition on time-axis exponentially decrease as concentration increases due to the molecular exchange between interface and bulk. It is found that the concentration dependence of the shift factors decreases as the size of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups increases. It is worth noting that the concentration dependence of the shift factors is related to the foaming speed of the surfactant solutions: As the concentration-dependence of shifting factors increases, the foaming speed increases. It is expected that the time-concentration superposition can be a new tool to study the dynamic dilatational rheology.