Freeze−Fracture Electron Microscopy of Sheared Lamellar Phase

It has been shown recently that shearing of lyotropic lamellar phases may lead to the formation of relatively monodispersed multilayered vesicles named spherulites. Freeze-fracture electron microscopy analysis of such preparations, presented here, shows that their three-dimensional organization is of a space-filling polyhedral type, built up from very closely packed spherulites, without any visible additional water present neither in the center of the spherulites nor in between them. Dilution of these preparations leads to the separation of individual spherulites without appreciable changes of their internal structure (multilayered nature and spacing between the layers). Diluted spherulites become spherical and are separated by the water dispersions of much smaller vesicles, originating probably from the fragmentation of some external layers of concentrated spherulites.