Answer 1:
That is a great (and quite complicated)
question! The answer to your question will
depend on the properties of the surfactant as
well as the medium (air, organic solvent, etc.)
that is located above the water.
As you may be aware, surfactants
(nonmagnetic) can be either "single-tailed" with
one hydrophobic group per (hydrophilic)
headgroup or "double-tailed" with two
hydrophobic groups per headgroup. Since double-
tailed surfactants have a much larger
hydrophobic domain than single-tailed
surfactants (per hydrophilic headgroup); then
you can imagine that double-tailed surfactants
are much harder to remove from (or concentrate
at) an interface. Keeping this in mind, my guess
would be that a single-tailed surfactant would
be much more responsive to a magnetic field than
a double-tailed surfactant. There are certainly
many other parameters about surfactants
(headgroup chemical formula, tail lengths, etc.)
that can also vary.
The medium above the water phase will also be
extremely important (in the air-water-surfactant
case you have described air is the medium I am
referring to). This medium is so important
because the spreading behavior of a surfactant
is due to the fact that water "doesn't like" to
be in contact with hydrophobic (non-polar)
surfaces. Water pays an energy penalty when in
contact with hydrophobic surfaces because water
is extremely polar and forms hydrogen-bonding
networks (between neighboring water molecules)
and cannot do this at hydrophobic surfaces.
Therefore, the more hydrophobic the third medium
is (air is extremely hydrophobic - more so even
than Teflon), the more the surfactant "wants to
stay" at the water surface, and the less likely
a magnet is to remove or concentrate the
surfactant.
In fact, there is a video of a magnetic
surfactant in the link below. This link also
contains a great discussion of the potential
uses of magnetic surfactants. In the video, the
bottom brown phase in the vial on the right is
the magnetic surfactant and the clear phase on
the top is an unspecified organic solvent. You
can see that the surfactant initially sticks to
the magnet in the organic solvent but then drops
off of the magnet when the magnet is lifted into
the air phase (the reason for this is a mix of
gravity and surface tension).
Video:
click
here
Thanks for the great question, and please
feel free to follow up with more questions if
you can think of anything else!
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