Novel ethoxylated inositol derivatives--hybrid carbohydrate/oligoethylene oxide surfactants.

Carbohydrate- and oligoethylene oxide-based surfactants behave quite differently despite the fact that they are both classes of nonionic surfactants. Intensive studies of a mixture at fixed molar ratio (1:1) of two very common sugar- and oligoethylene oxide-based surfactants, namely n-dodecyl-β-D-maltoside (β-C(12)G(2)) and n-dodecyl hexaethylene oxide (C(12)E(6)), revealed that most properties of the mixture are similar to those of the oligoethylene oxide-based surfactant. In the present work, this mixture is compared to respective "hybrid surfactants".

New ethoxylated inositol surfactant.

Carbohydrates are an attractive class of starting materials for organic syntheses because they are of natural origin, environmentally friendly, and highly functionalized, in this way promoting a sustainable chemistry. A somewhat exotic but nevertheless readily available family of carbohydrates allowing a fascinating chemistry are inositols (cyclohexane-1,2,3,4,5,6-hexols), which we currently use for the synthesis of new surfactants. In our previous work, we reported on the synthesis of a number of new regiochemically defined myo-inositol ethers and esters and studied their surface activity in aqueous solution as well as their ability to form thermotropic liquid crystals.