Scott D. Swanson1, Dariya I. Malyarenko1
1Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
Mixtures of surfactants, water, and alcohols form well characterized systems that mimic many properties of biological membranes. We have found that these lyotropic lamellar liquid crystals (as surrogate membranes) generate MT between the water and lipid phases and allow numerous molecular permutations to help disentangle MT properties. We report here studies of the mole fraction of decanol and weight percent of water influence on MT parameters, such as the estimated solid component (Mb0), cross-relaxation rate (Rt), and solid component T2 (T2b), in lamellar liquid crystals composed of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), decanol, and water.