Basic property of surface active agent
The surface tension of water can be reduced by adsorbing surfactants at the gas-liquid interface or by adsorbing surfactants at the liquid interface. Many surfactants can also aggregate into aggregates in the bulk solution.
Vesicles and micelles are such aggregates. The concentration at which the surfactant begins to form the micelle is called the critical micelle concentration or CMC. When a micelle is formed in water, the micelle's tail forms a nucleus that wraps the oil droplet, and their (ion/polarity) head forms a shell that remains in contact with the water. The surfactant aggregates in the oil, and the aggregate refers to the reverse micelle. In the reverse micelle, the head in the nucleus and the tail remain in full contact with the oil. Surfactants generally fall into four broad categories: anions, cations, non-ions and amphonic (dual electrons). Thermokinetics of surfactant systems is important both in theory and in practice. Because a surfactant system represents a system between an ordered and a disordered state of matter. Surfactant solutions may contain ordered phases (micelles) and disordered phases (free surfactant molecules and/or ions).
Common detergents, for example, increase water penetration in soil, but the effect lasts only a few days. (many standard detergents contain certain chemicals, such as sodium and bromine, which are unsuitable for soil because they damage plants.) Commercial soil wetting agents will continue to work for a while and will eventually be degraded by microorganisms. However, there are some that can have an impact on the biological cycle of aquatic life, so care must be taken to prevent these products from flowing into surface runoff, and excessive products should not be washed away.
