Reverse Micelle Nanocrystal Synthesis

Water-in-oil microemulsions confine dissolved reactants inside nanometre-scale surfactant droplets that act as individual nanoreactors. This simulator renders a real 3D oil-phase reactor full of such droplets: they diffuse via Brownian motion, collide, and — with a probability set by the inter-micelle exchange rate — transiently coalesce to swap their aqueous contents. When a metal-salt droplet exchanges with a reducing-agent droplet, a nanocrystal nucleates and keeps growing as further droplets donate monomer, capped by the confinement volume set by the water-to-surfactant ratio w0. Four controls — w0, exchange rate, reactant concentration and temperature — drive live readouts of crystal count, mean diameter and size polydispersity, showing exactly how microemulsion chemists dial in nanocrystal size distributions.