ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Multilayering of Methyl Ester Sulphonates at the Air-Aqueous Interface: Effect of Molecular Architecture

Abstract: Surfactants usually form a single layer of molecules at the surface of water. We have shown that under certain conditions more than one layer may form. When this happens the system seems to become a powerful wetting agent (it will wet Teflon). A whole range of useful technological properties would follow from this, e.g. more effective detergency, and since the phenomenon seems to be associated with more charged ions such as calcium and aluminium, hard water would enhance detergency in contrast to the usual reduction. It is important to be able to extend this behaviour to more surfactants. There is also a drive to use renewable materials. The methyl ester sulphonates are from the renewable resource of palm oil and we have now shown that they have the interesting ability to form multillayers. We now propose to examine the effect of their molecular structure on the multilayering phenomenon.

Principal Investigator: Dr Bob Thomas
Experimenter: Professor Jordan Petkov
Experimenter: Dr Kun Ma
Experimenter: Dr Steve Roberts
Local Contact: Dr Rebecca Welbourn
Experimenter: Dr Hui Xu
Experimenter: Dr Jordan Petkov
Experimenter: Dr Peixun Li
Experimenter: Professor Jeffery Penfold

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1620127

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1620127

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
Select the data format above to find out more about it.

Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr Bob Thomas et al; (2016): Multilayering of Methyl Ester Sulphonates at the Air-Aqueous Interface: Effect of Molecular Architecture, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1620127

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.