Ultrafast energy transfer in water-AOT reverse micelles

A spectroscopic investigation of the vibrational dynamics of water in a geometrically confined environment is presented. Reverse micelles of the ternary microemulsion H2O/AOT/n-octane (AOT = bis-2-ethylhexyl sulfosuccinate or aerosol-OT) with diameters ranging from 1 to 10 nm are used as a model system for nanoscopic water droplets surrounded by a soft-matter boundary. Femtosecond nonlinear infrared spectroscopy in the OH-stretching region of H2O fully confirms the core/shell model, in which the entrapped water molecules partition onto two molecular subensembles: a bulk-like water core and a hydration layer near the ionic surfactant headgroups. These two distinct water species display different relaxation kinetics, as they do not exchange vibrational energy. The observed spectrotemporal ultrafast response exhibits a local character, indicating that the spatial confinement influences approximately one molecular layer located near the water-amphiphile boundary. The core of the encapsulated water droplet is similar in its spectroscopic properties to the bulk phase of liquid water, i.e., it does not display any true confinement effects such as droplet-size-dependent vibrational lifetimes or rotational correlation times. Unlike in bulk water, no intermolecular transfer of OH-stretching quanta occurs among the interfacial water molecules or from the hydration shell to the bulk-like core, indicating that the hydrogen bond network near the H2O/AOT interface is strongly disrupted.