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Published on: November 21, 2013
Self-assembly properties of some chiral N-palmitoyl amino acid surfactants in aqueous solution
Mariana Gerova1, Fernanda Rodrigues, Jean-François Lamère
1Université Paul Sabatier, Laboratoire des Interactions Moléculaires Réactivité Chimique et Photochimique, CNRS UMR 5623, 31062 Toulouse cedex 9, France.
Abstract:
Various chiral N-palmitoyl amino acid surfactants (AAS) derived from methionine, proline, leucine, threonine, phenylalanine and phenylglycine were prepared and converted to their sodium salt. The properties of the aggregates formed in aqueous solution were studied for both the optically-active compounds and their racemic mixture. Characterization was made by surface tensiometry, fluorimetry, dynamic light scattering, circular dichroism (CD) and transmission electron microscopy. It appeared that most of the AAS studied in this work spontaneously formed different types of aggregates, including micrometer-sized aggregates. No significant difference could be found between the critical aggregation concentration (cac) value of pure enantiomers and that of the racemic forms. CD spectra did not reveal any aggregation-induced chirality.
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