2024 AIChE Annual Meeting
(34a) Fundamental Insights into Polymer—Surfactant Complex Formation
Authors
Daniel Miller - Presenter, The Dow Chemical Company
Lyndsay Leal, The Dow Chemical Company
Hammad Ali Faizi, The Dow Chemical Company
Ben Reiner, Dow Chemical
John Riley, The Dow Chemical Company
Christian Heil, The Dow Chemical Company
Meng Jing, Dow Chemical
Decai Yu, The Dow Chemical Company
Junsi Gu, The Dow Chemical Company
Nikhil Fernandes, The Dow Chemical Company
Michaeleen Pacholski, Dow
Caroline Nimako-Boateng, The Dow Chemical Company
YuanQiao Rao, The Dow Chemical Company
Polymer—surfactant complexation is leveraged to formulate a range of industrial products, including pharmaceuticals, home and personal care formulations, food formulations, and enhanced oil recovery solutions. Thus, polymer—surfactant complexes have been the subject of decades of research. This presentation will focus on the recent discovery that cationically modified dextran polymers can complex with anionic surfactants to form nanometric complexes with anomalously high deposition onto substrates. A suite of colloidal methods (high-throughput phase studies, optical microscopy, dynamic light scattering, small-angle X-ray scattering, and liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy) was used to characterize the cationic dextran—anionic surfactant complex morphology. The morphology of the complex is revealed to be unique relative to those formed by other commonly used cationically modified polysaccharides based on guar or hydroxyethyl cellulose. Dextran is derived from fermentation and biodegradable, and thus the fundamentals revealed in this presentation may form the basis of new, more sustainable product formulations.