SHEAR BANDING IN WORMLIKE MICELLAR SOLUTIONS Summer School on Neutron Scattering and Reflectometry

Wormlike micelles are an important class of surfactant micellar architectures that find use in applications ranging from consumer products to energy and nanomaterials. Many wormlike micellar systems exhibit a flow instability known as shear banding, characterized by an inhomogeneous flow field. Although many of the proposed mechanisms and theories for shear banding revolve around fluid microstructure, very little has been done to confirm them using direct microstructural measurements. Flow-small angle neutron scattering (flow-SANS) techniques are emerging as a powerful tool to interrogate the structure of wormlike micelles and other complex fluids under flow, enabling rigorous testing of theories and development of structure property relationships for shear banding. This experiment will utilize the full compliment of flow-SANS methods currently available to determine the underlying microstructural basis for shear banding in a model wormlike micellar fluid.