Effect of Molecular Rigidity on Micelle Formation in Amphiphilic Solution

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Micelle formation in an amphiphilic solution is investigated by a molecular dynamics simulation of coarse-grained semiflexible amphiphilic molecules with explicit solvent molecules. Our simulations show that the micellar shape changes from a cylinder to a disc as the intensity of the molecular rigidity increases. We find that the radius of gyration of the cylindrical micelle is larger than that of the disc-shaped micelle for small molecular rigidity, although the radius of gyration is almost steady even during the transition between a cylinder and a disc for large molecular rigidity. This indicates that a cylindrical micelle formed at small molecular rigidity is more anisotropic than the one obtained at large molecular rigidity. We also ascertained that a cylindrical micelle and a disc-shaped micelle coexist dynamically over a certain molecular rigidity range.