These inverted aggregates are
drawn together by hydrogen bonding in the presence of minimal
amounts of water and provide water-cores in the organic phase that
carry water-soluble compounds. Reverse micelles have been applied to large-scale separations
of proteins and other biomolecules
and consists of forward and backward extraction steps. Forward
extraction step involves the solubilization of target molecules into
reverse micelles from an oil sample, then solubilized molecules will
be subsequently stripped from reverse micelles into a fresh aqueous
solution during backward extraction. The reverse micelle can be
formed both in the presence and in the absence of organic modifiers