This Brief provides an up-to-date overview of smart surfactants and describes a broad spectrum
of triggers that induce the formation of wormlike micelles or reversibly tune the morphology of
surfactant aggregates from wormlike micelles to another state or vice versa. Combining the
fields of chemistry physics polymer science and nanotechnology its primary focus is on the
design formulation and processing of intelligent viscoelastic surfactant solutions covering
the scientific principles governing responsiveness to one or more particular triggers down to
the end-use-driven functions. The first chapter explains why and how surfactants self-assemble
into viscoelastic wormlike micellar solutions reminiscent of polymer solutions while the
following chapters show how the response to a given trigger translates into macroscopic
rheological changes including temperature light pH CO2 redox hydrocarbon etc. The last
chapter demonstrates the applications of these viscoelastic assemblies in oil and gas
production drag reduction biomaterials cleaning processes electrorheological and
photorheological fluids. Comments and perspectives are provided at the end to conclude this
Brief. This Brief is aimed at chemists physicists chemical engineers and nano-scientists who
are involved in self-assemblies and applications of surfactants as well as graduates in
physical chemistry. Yujun Feng Ph.D. is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Polymer
Materials Engineering Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University Chengdu Sichuan
Province P. R. China.Zonglin Chu Ph.D. is a post-doctoral fellow working at the Physical
Chemistry Institute University of Zürich Switzerland.Cécile A. Dreiss Ph.D. is a senior
lecturer at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science King's College London UK.
