Phase studies of sugar surfactant ionic liquid microemulsions: a green chemistry approach

Abstract

Microemulsions are increasingly gaining importance as templates since a great deal is known about how to tune the structure and size of domains. To understand how the addition of sugar surfactant to the ionic liquid and water to the aqueous phase,respectively,influence the phase behaviour and thus the microstructure, the phase diagrams were studied after each compositional change. The respective phase diagrams are presented and discussed in terms of their potential use as templates. A new approach to achieving this goal entails arresting the oil (aqueous) phase by gelling it, i.e. by forming an organo gel (a hydrogel), and polymerizing the aqueous (oil) phase. In the present work phase diagram of a ternary water – ionic liquid – sugar surfactant microemulsion systemswere studied. Mixing an extremely hydrophobic extractant considered here as ionic liquid with an extremely hydrophilic sugar surfactant we succeed to formulate microemulsion that can be described with the classical Winsor formalism for multiphasic microemulsions.