Nonionic surfactant-induced stabilization and tailorability of sugar-amphiphile hydrogels

Abstract

N-Octyl-D-gluconamide (C₈-DGlu) is known to form hydrogels; however, as is the case with many low molecular weight gelators, C₈-DGlu crystallizes from the gel state within a few hours. Thus, in order for such gelators to find uses, e.g. as viscosity modifiers, potential methods to increase their lifetime stability by significantly delaying or altogether preventing the onset of the crystallization need to be investigated. We show herein the effect of various nonionic surfactants, primarily those from the Laureth-n series, on the lifetime stability and mechanical properties of C₈-DGlu gels. In contrast to previous literature work using anionic surfactants, the use of nonionic surfactants allows gels to be formed in a much wider composition range of the two components (gelator and surfactant) yielding the ability to systematically tailor the mechanical properties of the gels across several orders of magnitude.