Polyelectrolyte–Surfactant Complexes in the Solid State: Facile building blocks for self‐organizing materials

Abstract

Even though mixtures of polyelectrolytes and surfactants are used in a variety of technologies, little is known about the solidstate properties of complexes formed by the two components. Recently reported methods for preparing polyelectrolytesurfactant complexes and their solid-state structure will be described in the context of the self-assembly behavior of the source surfactant molecules. This facile process offers the opportunity of producing a variety of new materials with applications that may range from switchable, permselective biological membranes to fluorinated materials with non-wetting properties. In the form of a solid-state complex, remarkably diverse mechanical properties ranging from elastomers to crystalline solids can easily be achieved. This review discusses the growing quantity of research in this new field, and in particular, the fabrication of such complexes in the form of processable self-doped conducting polymers is described.

Self-Assembled Poly(4-vinylpyridine)−Surfactant Systems Using Alkyl and Alkoxy Phenylazophenols

“…A comparison of these with the long periods of the P4VP(nPAP) systems also supports an end-to-end doublelayer structure. Such a structure is well-known from many other (covalent and noncovalent) side-chain polymer systems, 34,39,52 including P4VP(PDP). 51 A striking difference between the nPAP amphiphiles on the one hand and pentadecylphenol on the other is the strong increase in periodicity going from the crystalline state of pure PDP to the smectic P4VP(PDP) complex, respectively 2.6 and 3.7 nm ( Table 2).…”

“…32 In the PDP case the side chains are attached by hydrogen bonding, but similar supramolecular architectures may be obtained by ionic bonding or coordination bonding. [33][34][35][36] As long as nonmesogenic flexible side chains are involved, the self-assembly can be described well by the familiar block copolymer approach; e.g., the presence of a correlation hole peak in the disordered state and its dependence on the extend of side-chain bonding can be simply discussed using the RPA approach. 37 Apart from the temperature sensitivity of the side-chain bonding, these systems also closely resemble covalent side-chain polymers such as e.g.…”

DNA gel particles: An overview

“…When the surfactant/polyelectrolyte attraction overcomes their solubility in the solvent, associative phase separation occurs [29][30][31][32][33][34]. This results in the formation of concentrated liquid, gel, or precipitate phases in equilibrium with a dilute liquid [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37].…”

Micellar polymerization of alkylammonium 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonates in the solvents of different polarities and properties of resulting polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexes

“…However, they have a great potential of application being processed from organic solvents [2,4]. Piculell and co-authors [22] considered specific conditions for preparation of water-soluble complex salts of surfactant with polymeric (polycarboxylic) counterion which are of special interest as components for cosmetics.…”

“…Ionic complexes of polyelectrolytes and oppositely charged surfactants (polyelectrolyte-surfactant complex (PSC)) attract much attention during the past decades due to their ability to form nanostructured systems, their biological relevance, and other specific features [1][2][3][4][5][6]. They are of interest because of their fundamental and practical importance.…”