Synthesis of Novel Polyhydroxyl Surfactants. Influence of the Relative Stereochemistry on Surfactant Properties

Sammanfattning: This thesis deals with the synthesis and characterization ofnovel polyhydroxyl surfactants. The first part describes thesynthesis of a number of stereoisomers of a polyhydroxylsurfactant, and the second part concerns surface chemicalcharacterization.A stereodivergent route for preparation of the hydrophilichead group was developed, featuring consecutive stereoselectivedihydroxylations of a diene. This afforded in total fourdifferent polyhydroxyl head groups. These surfactant headgroups were natural and unnatural sugar analogues, and wereused for the coupling with two different hydrophobic tailgroups.Three of these surfactants were used to investigate thechiral discrimination in Langmuir monolayers at an air-waterinterface. The isotherms showed a remarkable difference incompressibility between surfactants of diastereomericrelationship and also a pronounced chiral discriminationbetween racemic and enantiomerically pure surfactants favoringheterochiral discrimination.