  We investigate the influence of surfactants on stabilizing the formation of
interfaces in solid-solid phase transitions. The analysis focuses on singularly
perturbed van der Waals-Cahn-Hillard-type energies for gradient vector fields,
supplemented with a term that accounts for the interaction between the
surfactant and the solid. Assuming the potential term to have only two rank-one
connected wells, we prove that the effective energy for the formation of an
interface decreases when the surfactant segregate to the interface.
