Date of Award

2012-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Chemistry

Advisor(s)

Juan C. Noveron

Abstract

Cationic surfactants are being used in many applications in industrial manufacture and medical technologies. Pyridinium salts come under the category of cationic surfactants. Surfactants have two distinct regions in their chemical structure, one of which is water-linking or hydrophilic and the other of which water-avoiding or hydrophobic. These molecules are referred to as amphiphilic or amiphipathic molecules or simply as surfactants or surface active agents. Depending on their charge the characteristics of the surface-active molecules may be anionic, cationic, zwitterionic (ampholytic) or non-ionic. These surfactants are used less for their wetting abilities than for their pronounced germicidal properties and their ability to adsorb on the surface of skin, hair, and fabrics. The cationic surfactants represent a broad family of commercial compounds whose position has been raised from specialty chemicals to bulk industrial chemicals, which are being used as antistatic agents, corrosion inhibitors, textile softeners, foam depressants, flotation chemicals, asphalt, and petroleum additives. These kind of cationic surfactants are a class of compounds having at least one hydrophobic group attached directly or indirectly to a positively charged nitrogen atom. Surfactants can be unsaturated heterocyclic compounds having different functional group present either on pyridine ring or at nitrogen atom.

This research focuses on the design and synthesis of new amphiphilic molecules having a lipid hydrophobic chain and a hydrophilic head and an ability to bind transition metals via directional coordination bonds. The ability for surfactants to bind metals confer many self-assembly properties to these materials. For example, in Chapter 2, we demonstrate that Silver (I) ions direct the self-assembly of the new surfactants into single-molecule nanoscale micelles. In addition, in Chapter 3, we demonstrate a novel methodology towards 4-aminopyridinum surfactants, these are quaternary pyridinium compounds characterized by the fact that contain a hydrophobic part and are linked to the charged head group.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

61 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Luis J. Andujo

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Chemistry Commons

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