SCALING LAWS FOR MICROEMULSIONS GOVERNED BY SPONTANEOUS CURVATURE

We introduce a model for microemulsions whose basic building blocks ar e cylindrical tubes connected by spherical junctions forming a network . The model predicts analytic scaling laws which quantitatively reprod uce several prominent experimental features of the phase diagram, incl uding the closed loops of 2-phase coexistence and the 3-phase body. Th e interfacial nature of our model, which takes into account only the c urvature energy and the entropy of the interface, explains the observe d water/oil symmetry and the collapse of the experimental data onto a single universal scaling curve.