Biliquid oil-in-water nanofoams and spontaneous emulsification obtained with a surfactant resistant to curvature changes.

Hypothesis: Due to its huge polar headgroup, octaoxyethylene octyl ether carboxylic acid (CECHCOOH = Akypo LF2™) is supposed not to be able to change its curvature sufficiently to form bicontinuous microemulsions. Instead, upon adding an oil to the binary water - surfactant system, excess oil could be squeezed out or a biliquid foam could form.

Experiments: An auto-dilution setup was used to record small-angle X-ray scattering data along six dilution lines in the newly established phase diagram of the ternary system 2-ethylhexanol - CECHCOOH - water.

Ternary complexes of chiral disulfonimides in transfer-hydrogenation of imines: the relevance of late intermediates in ion pair catalysis.

In ion pairing catalysis, the structures of late intermediates and transition states are key to understanding and further development of the field. Typically, a plethora of transition states is explored computationally. However, especially for ion pairs the access to energetics computational chemistry is difficult and experimental data is rare.