A facile route for creating “reverse” vesicles: Insights into “reverse” self-assembly in organic liquids.
S.-H. Tung, H.-Y. Lee and S. R. Raghavan*
Journal of the American Chemical Society, 130, 8813 (2008)
Reverse vesicles are self-assembled containers formed in nonpolar liquids (oils). We report a simple method to form reverse vesicles by mxing long- and short-chain lipids in conjunction with a small amount of salt.

Strain-stiffening response in transient networks formed by reverse wormlike micelles.
S.-H. Tung and S. R. Raghavan*
Langmuir, 24, 8405 (2008)
Strain-stiffening, i.e., an increase in stiffness with deformation, is a property of many aqueous biopolymer gels. Here, we demonstrate the same unusual behavior for a viscoelastic solution of wormlike micelles in cyclohexane.

Self-assembled organogels obtained by adding minute concentrations of a bile salt to AOT reverse micelles.
S.-H. Tung, Y.-E. Huang and S. R. Raghavan*
Soft Matter, 4, 1086 (2008)
We show that adding millimolar amounts of the bile salt, SDC converts a dilute micellar solution of the lipid, AOT in cyclohexane into a stiff organogel. The gel shows biomimetic properties, including birefringence and strain-stiffening.

Liposome-templated supramolecular assembly of responsive alginate nanogels.
J. S. Hong, W. Vreeland, L. Locascio, M. Gaitan and S. R. Raghavan*
Langmuir, 24,4092 (2008)
Gels of the biopolymer, alginate can easily be created at the macro or micro scales. Here we demonstrate a way to create nanoscale gels of alginate using liposomes as a template. The gels are studied by light scattering and TEM.