Influence of Structural Modifications on the Self-Assembly of Pyridine-Based Double-Tailed Surfactants in Thin Films
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Amphiphilic molecules are attracting growing interest for diverse applications in drug delivery, advanced materials, and interfacial technologies. Their structural variations offer key insights into how molecular design influences self-assembly, interfacial behavior, and functional performance. This study examined the interfacial behavior of dihexadecylpyridine-2,6-dicarboxylate (EDTS)-based surfactants as a function of various structural modifications, including headgroup quaternization (EDTS + ), zinc coordination to constrain the head–tail junction (Zn-EDTS), alteration of the head–tail linkage (ester vs imine, IDTS), along with a comparison with a conventional single-tail analogue (ECS). Gas-phase density functional theory calculations revealed V-shaped geometries with varying degrees of compactness for the investigated architectures. For Langmuir monolayer studies, surface pressure–area (π– A ) isotherms demonstrated distinct differences in the interfacial behaviors of EDTS compared to their single-tailed analogues. These findings were supported by Brewster angle microscopy, surface potential–area (Δ V – A ) isotherms and atomic force microscopy measurements of films fabricated at air–water and air–solid interfaces, showing that subtle architectural modifications significantly influence packing density and domain formation. Additionally, the effect of mixing with C16-chain amphiphiles, specifically their carboxylic acid, alcohol, and trimethylammonium variants, on EDTS monolayers was studied. Headgroup compatibility in this class of surfactants was evaluated by isolating tail–tail packing contributions from the excess Gibbs free energy of mixing (Δ G mix ex ) for EDTS-ECS.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".