"Invisible water" - inverted micelles investigated by dielectric, acoustic and dynamic light scattering methods

Reverse micelles are complex systems consisted of water, hydrocarbon and surfactant. In spite of large content of water (up to 90 mol%) the electric conductivity and electric permittivity is relatively low, sound velocity is practically the same as for pure hydrocarbon. The reason for these "mysterious" properties is the structure of reverse micelles -water is hidden in surfactant shell and surrounded by nonpolar solvent. Change in volume fraction of micelles leads to an interesting phenomenon linked with percolation. In the contribution we would like to present our recent results obtained in docusate sodium salt + water + isooctane mixture. The most interesting and actually not fully understood phenomenon is an enormous positive non-linear dielectric effect observed in the aforementioned system.