Effect of a Clathrate-Forming Counterion on Micellar Solubilization
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Clathrate hydrates are supramolecular solids in which small, hydrophobic species are trapped inside a network of hydrogen-bonded water cages. While the best known examples are the natural gas hydrates, similar crystalline structures can also be formed from salts of tetra-n-butylammonium hydroxide (TBAOH). When TBAOH is reacted with medium to long chain carboxylic acids it produces surfactant compounds capable of forming either clathrate hydrates or micelle solutions in aqueous solution. However, little is known about how this dual nature affects the functional properties of the surfactants. Here we show a direct comparison of the solubilization of the solvatochromic dye, Nile Red (NR) by sodium 10-undecenoate (NaU) and tetrabutylammonium 10-undecenoate (TBAU). We found from the fluorescence emission spectra that the environment around NR was more polar for TBAU micellar solutions than for NaU. Molecular dynamics simulations indicated that for both systems, the NR had partial exposure to water at the surface of the micelle. The primary difference was a significant structuring of the counterions and water molecules as part of the micelle/NR complex for TBAU. Our results demonstrate an active role of role of the clathrate-forming counterion in the formation of the micelle and the solubilization of the substrate. We anticipate that the more polar environment near the surface of the micelle induced by the TBA/H 2 O structuring will enhance the solubilization power of the micelle for more polar substrates. Furthermore, we expect the more structured shell around the micelle core to enhance the isolation of the substrate from the environment, a valuable feature for applications such as targeted drug delivery.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".