Switching chirality in the assemblies of bio-based amphiphiles solely by varying their alkyl chain length

Pei Zhang; Jun Ma; Xinchen Kang; Huizhen Liu; Chunjun Chen; Zhanrong Zhang; Jianling Zhang; Buxing Han

doi:10.1039/c6cc10122d

Switching chirality in the assemblies of bio-based amphiphiles solely by varying their alkyl chain length

Chem Commun (Camb). 2017 Feb 9;53(13):2162-2165. doi: 10.1039/c6cc10122d.

Authors

Pei Zhang¹, Jun Ma¹, Xinchen Kang², Huizhen Liu², Chunjun Chen², Zhanrong Zhang¹, Jianling Zhang², Buxing Han²

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. hanbx@iccas.ac.cn.
² Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. hanbx@iccas.ac.cn and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.

PMID: 28144651
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc10122d

Abstract

Here we show that chirality inversion can be realized solely by changing the alkyl chain length of sorbitol-alkylamine surfactants. The chirality switch phenomenon is attributed to twisting of a headgroup, which depends on the balance between hydrophobic interaction and torsional stress, resulting in various orientational orders in assemblies and chirality inversion.