Diamine-surfactant adsorption at the air–water interface: The impact of the diamine structure, surfactant structure and solution pH

• Adsorption at air–water interface depends on diamine and surfactant structure. • All diamines result in enhanced adsorption of SDS, MES and SLES. • Multilayer adsorption for butanediamine / SDS (MES) • Multilayer formation independent of solution pH. • Only monolayer adsorption with ethoxylated diamines. The biogenic amines, polyamines, such as putrescine and cadavarine, are small flexible polycations. They interact with charged biological species and have a range of important biological functions. Their strong interaction with anionic surfactants results in enhanced adsorption at interfaces. Aspects of the impact of the polyamine molecular weight and structure on the pattern of surfactant adsorption at the air–water interface have been explored previously using neutron reflectivity, NR, and surface tension, ST. However there is limited evidence for the extent to which surfactant adsorption can be manipulated and the impact of the diamine structure and surfactant headgroup structure on surfactant adsorption at the air–water interface is reported here. The addition of putrescine [1,4 diaminobutane or butanediamine] over the pH range 3 to 10 enhances significantly the adsorption of sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS, sodium dodecyl diethylene sulfate, SLES, and sodium tetradecyl methyl ester sulfonate, MES. For SDS and to a lesser extent MES there are regions where surface multilayer adsorption occurs at both pH 3 and 10, and this extends significantly the range of polyamine structures for which this is observed. Modifying the diamine spacer with ethylene oxide groups of varying length still results in enhanced adsorption for SDS and MES, but the enhancement is less pronounced and depends upon the size of the ethylene oxide group. However the incorporation of the ethylene oxide group does suppresses the formation of the more complex surface multilayered structures.