Curvature interfacial transitions in amphiphile monolayers and their possible relation to the onset of micelle formation

We describe two types of curvature-related interfacial transitions occuring in soluble amphiphile monolayers under compression. The first type corresponds to the buckling of areas with sizes up to the monolayers de GenresTaupin persistence length squared, and starts to occur when the interfacial tension is about one-half its bare value. The second type corresponds to the transformation of the simply connected monolayer into either a dispersion of droplets or an interconnected bicontinuous structure. The resulting type of volume-spanning state is determined by the sign of the saddle-splay bending constant