The impact that catatonic surfactants have on the soft matter world

Abstract

Catanionic surfactants are a class of amphiphile which result from the equimolar mixture of a cationic and an anionic surfactant, where the salt formed by the counterions is removed. In our group, for the first time, we have synthetized the unique catanionic surfactant: benzyl-n-hexadecyldimethylammonium 1,4-bis-2-ethylhexylsulfosuccinate (BHD-AOT), which has a tremendous impact in the soft matter field. This came out because it can form reverse micelles (RMs) or spontaneous large unilamellar vesicles, depending on the solvent used. RMs are supramolecular assemblies of surfactants formed in nonpolar solvents, in which the polar head groups of the surfactants point inward and the hydrocarbon chains point toward to the nonpolar medium. Vesicles are spherical aggregates formed by some amphiphilic compounds in water, in which the bilayer surrounds an aqueous void volume that can be ?loaded? with a wide variety of water-soluble marker molecules. In this review, we will show the synthesis, characterization, and properties of the different organized media created by BHD-AOT and, exciting applications since, as we proved, it is non-toxic and results especially interesting for drug delivery system.