Amino Acid Surfactant Synthesis And Characterization

Nowadays there are two obvious development trends of surfactant industry in the world, on the one hand, synthesis of environmental friendly surfactants is required as far as environmental protection concerned; on the other hand, with the rising price of materials for synthesizing surfactants. With the development of science and technology and the improvement of people's living level, the requirement for chemical products-surfactant's mildness, safety and environment protect is stricter. Since it is known that surface-active compounds can adversely affect the environment, the biodegradability and biocompatibility of surfactants have become almost as important as their functional performance to the consumer. Because of this, there is a pressing need for developing efficient surfactants that are biodegradable and biocompatible. Surfactant molecules from renewable raw materials, which were found to be active against various disease-causing bacteria and viruses, are one of the preferred choices for food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications. The value of the structure which similar to natural amino acids as raw materials for the preparation of surfactants was recognized as soon as they were discovered early in the last century. The combination of polar amino acids (hydrophilic moiety) and non-polar long chain compounds (hydrophobic moiety) for building up the amphiphilic structure has produced molecules with high surface activity.In this report, a series of isostearoyl amino acids Surfactants were synthesized by coupling amino acids to isostearic acid via the activation of N-hydroxyl succinimidyl ester or amide linkage. The chemical purity and structure of the compounds was characteristiced by IR, MS, Elemental analysis, and the properties were also tested. Surface activity of target matter were examined. One important feature in this paper is the high yields and mildness as well as simple and convenient procedure and technological equipment. Consequently, it can be anticipated that our approach will be further applicable to the synthesis of a variety of natural long chain saturated fatty acids and different amino acid. Moreover, It can be feasible that varying amino acids in their structure in order to obtain more types of amino acid-based surfactants.