Issue 25, 2017, Issue in Progress

Towards life in hydrocarbons: aggregation behaviour of “reverse” surfactants in cyclohexane

Abstract

Unconventional life forms based on membranes able to self-assemble in hydrocarbons instead of water might in principle exist in the hydrocarbon-rich environments on Earth and in the methane lakes of Saturn's moon, Titan. This reversed paradigm for life would require that these membranes should be constituted of “reverse” surfactants. We here describe the synthesis of reverse amphiphilic molecules with a geometry similar to conventional surfactants but with an opposite topological configuration: lipophilic heads and lipophobic tails. Their self-assembly in cyclohexane was studied by 1H 2D DOSY-NMR and SAXS. We present experimental evidence of the self-assembly of these reverse surfactants to yield typical micelles in a hydrocarbon solvent.

Graphical abstract: Towards life in hydrocarbons: aggregation behaviour of “reverse” surfactants in cyclohexane

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 Jan 2017
Accepted
23 Feb 2017
First published
07 Mar 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2017,7, 15337-15341

Towards life in hydrocarbons: aggregation behaviour of “reverse” surfactants in cyclohexane

M. Facchin, A. Scarso, M. Selva, A. Perosa and P. Riello, RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 15337 DOI: 10.1039/C7RA01027C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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