Surfactant-cellulose -- towards novel plant based surface active complexes

Group research area: Cellulose

Surfactants are surface active compounds used in many day-to-day products such as food, cosmetics, and cleaning products. Cellulose microfibrils have been extensively used as tuner and bulk properties of materials (e.g. viscosity modifiers). The poor amphiphilic nature of cellulose led to poor interest in its interfacial properties (although extensively used as a Pickering stabiliser of oil-in-water emulsions). Nevertheless, from preliminary investigations we noticed that interesting surface active properties arise from the surfactant-cellulose complexation. We propose a masters project based on the development of surface active surfactant-cellulose complexes. The candidate will mainly deal with surface rheology (2D), surface tension measurements, microscopy (CLSM).

A summary of surface rheology and other related techniques: https://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2010/107501.pdf

If you are interested in this project please contact Prof. Edler or Andrew (Office 0.15).

Formation of surfactant-cellulose complexes at water-air interface.