The formation and behaviour of micelles of sodium dodecylsulfate in water byuse of a static micro mixer were studied. Trisbipyridylruthenium(II) was applied asindicator dye, 9-methylanthracene was used for fluorescence quenching. All experimentswere carried out by a micro fluid arrangement with three syringe pumps, a 2 1 two-stepstatic micro mixer (IPHT Jena) and a on-line micro fluorimetry including a luminescencediode for excitation, a blue glass filter (BG 7, Linos), two edge filters (RG 630, Linos) anda photo counting module (MP 900, Perkin Elmer). It was possible to measure thefluorescence inside the PTFE tube (inner diameter 0.5 mm) directly. A linear dependenceof fluorescence intensity from dye concentration was observed in absence of quencher andsurfactant as expected. An aggregation number of about 62 was found in the flow raterange between 300 and 800 μL/min. The fluorescence intensity increases slightly, butsignificant with increasing flow rate, if no quencher is present. In the presence of quencher,the fluorescence intensity decreases with decreasing surfactant concentration and withenhanced flow rate. The strength of the flow rate effect on the fluorescence increases withdecreasing surfactant concentration. The size of micelles was determined in micro channelsby the micro fluorimetric method in analogy to the conventional system. The micellesextract the quencher from the solution and lower, this way, the quenching effect. The sizeof micelles was estimated and it could be shown, that the flow rate has only low effect onthe aggregation number at the investigated flow rates. The effect of flow rate andsurfactant concentration on the fluorescence in the presence of quencher was interpreted asa shift in the micelle concentration due to the shear forces. It is expected, that thefluorescence intensity is lowered, if more quencher molecules are molecular disperse distributed inside the solution. Obviously, the lowered fluorescence intensity at higher flow rates suggests a reduction of the micelle density causing an increase of quencher concentration outside the micelles.
Keywords: aggregation number; fluorescence quenching; laminar flow; micelles; microreaction technology; shear stress.