ABSTRACT
Surfactants as a class of chemicals have enjoyed a remarkable rate of growth since the 1920s. They are used in numerous fields of application and process technology and can be found in many areas of human daily life. The bipolar structure is the cause of the unique solution behaviour of surfactants such as micelle formation a certain concentration in solution, the orientation of the molecules at interfaces, adsorption at interfaces and its solubility in at least one phase of a liquid system. These behaviours can manifest themselves into several, main surface active properties when used in polymer systems. These include: defoaming, dispersing, emulsification, foaming, solubilisation, and wetting. The chapter discusses these properties in relation to the use of oligomeric surfactants in polymer systems only. ‘Oligomeric’ in this instance will refer to surfactants containing more than one monomer unit in a steric stabilisation chain.
