Sustainable Routes Toward Amino Acid-Based Surfactants: Borrowing Hydrogen Catalysis and Beyond

Amino acid-based surfactants combine renewable head groups with tunable amphiphilic functional groups and are therefore attractive candidates for the development of more sustainable surfactants. However, bio-based building blocks alone cannot guarantee sustainability. Moreover, it depends on the choice of synthetic route, waste generation, feedstock origin, catalyst, product performance, toxicity, and environmental fate. This perspective discusses borrowing hydrogen catalysis (BHC) as a central strategy toward N-alkylated and N,N-dialkylated amino acid-based surfactants, which are derived from alcohols and amines with water as the only formal by-product. To place BHC in context, complementary routes such as enzymatic N-acylation, pathway-engineered fermentation, and Diels-Alder/ring-opening strategies starting from renewable hydrophobes are highlighted. Finally, design criteria and future challenges for the translation of amino acid-based surfactants from promising lab studies toward scalable and sustainable platforms are proposed.