Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Aqueous systems containing both polymers and surfactants display a wide variety of properties useful in the formulation of a large range of commercial products, but equally fascinating to the researcher. The aggregation of surfactants and polymers in aqueous solution is governed by the subtle balance of hydrophilic, hydrophobic and ionic interactions. Processes such as hydrophobic aggregation, viscosity enhancement, gel formation, solubilization, phase separation, etc. can all be controlled and even tailored to particular applications and requirements.If areas of application such as drug delivery and transvection are considered,  hydrophobically modified "natural" polymers, such as those derived from polysaccharides, are more likely to find approval but due to a number of complex experimental factors such systems have not been studied as widely as those based on HM synthetic polymers. In this project, we synthesize certain HM polysaccharides, and study their interactions with surfactants in relation to the very high enhancements in solution viscosity observed even at relatively low surfactant and polymer concentrations. The objective is to understand the variations in surfactant binding, solution rheology, and the solubilization of neutral and charged hydrophobic molecules in high viscosity solutions or surfactant mediated "dynamic" gels, and the control of these properties by external factors such as pH or solvent conditions.