Molecular origin for pH -responsive wormlike micelles of zwitterionic surfactants triggered by aromatic acid derivatives

Abstract

Introduction of aromatic acid derivatives (AADs) into zwitterionic surfactants is an efficient method to prepare wormlike micelles with pH-controllable viscosity; however, the coincident molecular origin of AAD/zwitterionic surfactant binary mixtures remains unclear. Herein, the self-assembly of hydroxyl derivatives of benzoic acid (BA) and cetyldimethyl betaine (BS-16) mixtures in water was systematically assessed, and various factors, such as the molecular structure, molar ratio of AAD and BS-16, and solution pH, were investigated. The structure-property relationship of AAD/BS-16 binary mixtures was established, which provided the molecular origin for the effect of AAD on micellar microstructures and the pH-induced morphological transitions. The ortho-substituted hydroxyl moiety in the BA molecule facilitated the formation of larger wormlike micelles, whereas the effect of the meta-substituted moiety was less significant. The para-substituted hydroxyl moiety in BA did not favor micellar growth. This moiety exhibited similar characteristics to the increasing hydroxyl moiety number in the AAD molecules or solution pH where the negative effects of steric hindrance and electrostatic interactions of molecules in micelles are dominant.

Keywords

Zwitterionic surfactants / Aromatic acid derivatives / pH response / Wormlike micelles / Spherical micelles / Viscosity

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shuo Lu: Writing - original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Yonghang Cheng: Investigation. Jinfeng Dong: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Xuefeng Li: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [NSFC 22072109 and 22372125]. We are grateful to the Core Facility of Wuhan University for the cryo-TEM measurements.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.chphma.2024.02.002.

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