ABSTRACT
There are many contributing factors in designing saccharide surfactants to achieve desired surface-active properties, particularly as subtle changes in structure can have quite dramatic effects. Of obvious importance is the selection of the polar head group and hydrophobic tail(s), and the coupling linkage between the two components. Another critical factor ismolecular geometry/configuration of the
surfactant structure. Although many synthetic surfactants have been developed using saccharides as the polar head group, the scope is relatively limited because of the longstanding difficulties in synthesizing extended saccharide sequences of high yield and purity. Consequently, most reports on saccharide surfactants have focused on relatively few nonionic monosaccharides and disaccharides, often based on derivatives of glucose or maltose. This includes linear and branched alkyl glucosides and glucosyl alkanes [1-12], alkylamino-1-deoxylactitols [13,14], alkyl maltosides [15], alkyl gluconamide, and maltonamides [16-20]. However, with the increasing availability of purified oligosaccharides and polysaccharides, some progress has been made in extending this work to include more complex saccharide head groups, including maltooligosaccharides [16,18], dextrans [19,20], and anionic surfactants with oligosaccharides and polysaccharides of heparin [21]. The complexity of saccharide structures offers extensive possibilities for developing novel saccharide surfactants and for achieving a comprehensive understanding of structureproperty relationships.
