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The Twofold Role of 12-Hydroxyoctadecanoic Acid (12-HOA) in a Ternary Water-Surfactant-12-HOA System: Gelator and Co-Surfactant

The Twofold Role of 12-Hydroxyoctadecanoic Acid (12-HOA) in a Ternary Water-Surfactant-12-HOA System: Gelator and Co-Surfactant

Katja Steck, Claudia Schmidt, Cosima Stubenrauch

Gels. 2018 Sep 12;4(3):78.

PMID: 30674854

Abstract:

Gelled lyotropic liquid crystals can be formed by adding a gelator to a mixture of surfactant and solvent. If the gel network and the liquid-crystalline phase coexist without influencing each other, the self-assembly is called orthogonal. In this study, the influence of the organogelator 12-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid (12-HOA) on the lamellar and hexagonal liquid crystalline phases of the binary system H₂O⁻C12E₇ (heptaethylene glycol monododecyl ether) is investigated. More precisely, we added 12-HOA at mass fractions from 0.015 to 0.05 and studied the resulting phase diagram of the system H₂O⁻C12E₇ by visual observation of birefringence and by ²H NMR spectroscopy. In addition, the dynamic shear moduli of the samples were measured in order to examine their gel character. The results show that 12-HOA is partly acting as co-surfactant, manifested by the destabilization of the hexagonal phase and the stabilization of the lamellar phase. The higher the total surfactant concentration, the more 12-HOA is incorporated in the surfactant layer. Accordingly, its gelation capacity is substantially reduced in the surfactant solution compared to the system 12-HOA⁻n-decane, and large amounts of gelator are required for gels to form, especially in the lamellar phase.

Chemicals Related in the Paper:

Catalog Number	Product Name	Structure	CAS Number	Price
AP106149-B	12-Hydroxyoctadecanoic acid		106-14-9	Price

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