Structural Evolution of Oleyl Betainate Aggregates: In Situ Formation of Small Unilamellar Vesicles
Journal article, 2010

Betaine esters prepared from long-chain alcohols are a class of hydrolyzable cationic surfactants that is interesting both because the compounds can be designed to give harmless products on degradation and that the hydrolysis products can induce potentially useful changes in the properties of systems where such surfactants are present. In this work, the evolution in structure of aggregates formed by oleyl betainate during hydrolysis of the compound has been investigated using H-1 NMR and cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM). With an increasing extent of hydrolysis, and thus an increasing fraction of oleyl alcohol in the aggregates, the aggregate structure changes in a sequence consistent with an increase in the average packing parameter of the surfactant-alcohol mixture, from spherical micelles, via wormlike micelles, to vesicles. An important result front this work is that it demonstrates a means of in situ production of small unilamellar vesicles with a rather narrow size distribution.

micellar

deuterium oxide

Long-chain alcohols

systems

surfactant

methyl-ester

aqueous-solution

dodecyl betainate

electron-microscopy

hydrolysis

binding

Author

Dan Lundberg

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Applied Surface Chemistry

M. Almgren

Uppsala University

Patrik Jarvoll Dae

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering

G. Karlsson

Uppsala University

Langmuir

07437463 (ISSN) 15205827 (eISSN)

Vol. 26 11 7996-8001

Subject Categories

Chemical Sciences

DOI

10.1021/la904889n

More information

Latest update

2/28/2018