Phase behaviour of alkyl glycerol ether surfactants

• In this paper the phase behaviour and physical properties of a series of alkyl (C6, C8, C12 and iso-C8) monoglycerol ethers and 2-hydroxyalkyl (C6, C8, C12) monoglycerol ethers are presented. The binary phase diagram for the surfactants shows very little dependence on temperature. It is shown that as the alkyl chain length increases the tendency to form lamellar liquid crystalline phases increases. The branched alkyl chain shows no formation of lamellar phase even at high concentrations of surfactant. The differences in phase behaviour between the surfactants is attributed to the variation in the critical packing parameter (CPP) of the surfactants. The presence of an additional hydroxyl group in the alkyl chain causes a temperature independent solubility behaviour. Ternary phase diagrams were prepared using dodecane as the oil phase. Hexyl glycerol ether was the only of the alkyl glycerol ethers which was sufficiently water soluble to determine the surface tension and CMC. The CMC was determined to 15 mM (and surface tension to 26 mN m-1).

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