Conformations of hydrophobic chains at liquid/gas interface and their implications on surfactant adsorption
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Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences
Publication date: 2002-01-01
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Piotr Warszyński
Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Niezapominajek 8,
30-239, Cracow, Poland
Physicochem. Probl. Miner. Process. 2002;36(1):39–49
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ABSTRACT
We present a simple model of single chain, non-ionic surfactant adsorption at gas/liquid interface. Our model takes explicitly into account the effect of conformations the surfactant hydrocarbon chains can assume at the interface. We applied our model for the description of a dependence of surface tension on solution concentration of homologous series of n-alkanols. Aliphatic alcohols with the chain length from four to ten carbon atoms were studied. We found that our model correctly describes experimental data and predicts a distribution of chain conformation at the interface for all n-alkanols studied. We detected small but distinct even-odd effect in the distribution of conformations.