A diverse range of molecular surfactants and polymers have been incorporated into aqueous graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) dispersions in order to understand the complex relationship between surface chemistry, surface forces and interfacial thermodynamics of these materials with typical amphiphiles. Surfactant additives were systematically varied in terms of their charge...
The immobilization of molecular catalysts in confined geometries of mesoporous support materials has been shown to selectively control the catalytic performance. An additional increase in yield and selectivity of catalytic reactions are expected by combining the spatial confinement of the pores with that of a thin ionic liquid film at the pore surface. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) can...
By adding small amounts of amphiphilic diblock copolymers like poly(ethylene oxide)-co-poly(ethylene propylene) (PEO-PEP) to water – oil – non-ionic surfactant systems, Jakobs et al. showed that the efficiency of medium-chain surfactants to solubilize equal amounts of water and oil can be strongly increased (so-called efficiency boosting) [1]. In order to obtain a similar boosting while...
With global warming, green chemistry has experienced a great development. In this context, fatty acids are surfactants of particular interest since they can be extracted from agricultural resources. The use of an organic counter-ion enables their solubilization in aqueous solution at room temperature where they self-assemble into different supramolecular structures.
Stearic Acid (SA), one of...
Using polymer particles templates to prepare porous materials is not only a cost-efficient strategy but offers the possibility of pore size and morphology control by the particle size and polydispersity. In this study, we investigated the influence of the sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) concentration utilized in the emulsion polymerization of styrene on both the properties of the obtained...
Understanding and engineering the flow-response of complex fluids made by surfactant membranes is a key challenge for their practical utilization. Nevertheless, the predicted sponge-to-lamellar transition of self-assembled surfactant membranes upon shear flow [1] has, to our knowledge, only been shown for surfactant bilayers [2,3]. The lack of experimental reports of such a transition for the...
Planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. In this study, we focused on the membranes of the first forms of living entities that assembled from a set of simple molecules available on the prebiotic Earth. The lipid membrane is a structure formed by hydrophobic or amphiphilic biomolecules called lipids, which are used in living organisms for many purposes, as a barrier between the interior of...
Chitin, which is mainly found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans, is the second most abundant biopolymer besides cellulose.[1] Although about 1000 billion tons of chitin are produced in the biosphere every year, it is barely used to produce high-value products due to its difficult processability.[2] One promising approach to obtain such high-value products is the use of chitin...
Hydrogels are at the forefront of scientific attention especially in the biological and biomedical fields where they provide the basis for stimuli-responsive artificial tissues, vehicles for drug delivery or biosensors. We study physically crosslinked hydrogels based on ionenes, positively charged polyelectrolytes, for which strong counterion-specific effects have been observed previously [1]....
