A new fluorinated inositol-based surfactant

Carbohydrates are versatile materials of natural origin and thus they are interesting hydrophilic head groups for surfactants. Especially myo-inositol derivatives have advantages over pyranosidic or furanosidic sugar derivatives, namely a higher thermal and chemical stability. The main disadvantage turned out to be the poor water solubility of myo-inositol surfactants, which, however, can be overcome by introducing an oligoethylene oxide group between the inositol head group and the apolar chain. Our goal was to combine the favourable properties of surfactants based on myo-inositol with those of fluorinated surfactants, which are becoming increasingly important as CO2 solvation mediators or stabilizers for reverse water-in-fluorocarbon microemulsions. Thus we synthesized a new surfactant which combines the three units of interest, namely an inositol head group, an oligoethylene oxide linker to provide sufficient solubility and a fluorinated chain. We studied the thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystalline behaviour as well as the surface tension and compared these results with those of a fully protonated surfactant which has a similar structure.