ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Covalent linking of several amphiphilic moieties at the headgroup level yields a ‘‘surfactant oligomer’’ (Fig. 1a). The surfactant oligomers we are going to deal with are higher homologues of the gemini surfactants (surfactant dimers) (Fig. 1c) [1]. They are distinguished from ‘‘oligomeric surfactants’’ (macrosurfactants), which consist of amphiphilic diblock copolymers (Fig. 1b), and are also currently the subject of active research [2]. In surfactant oligomers, the structural repeating unit is amphiphilic by itself. The chemical group that connects the amphiphilic moieties is of variable nature and length.
