Department of Chemistry, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat 395007, India.
Department of Chemistry, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong 793022, India.
Colloids Surf B Biointerfaces. 2014 Feb 1;114:386-91. doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2013.10.030. Epub 2013 Oct 30.
Pluronics(®) are an important class of non-ionic surfactants because of their rich phase behavior and numerous industrial and biomedical applications. F127, an FDA approved Pluronic(®) is the most prominent member amongst them owing to its potential uses as vehicle for drug delivery and template for the fabrication of mesoporous materials. A cubic micellar gel formed by this copolymer above 15 wt% concentration is the commonly used form of self assembled structure for these applications. In this manuscript we report SANS, fluorescence and rheological studies on the effect of n-butanol on gelation characteristics of aqueous F127 solutions. The studies show that solubilization of n-butanol results in a large increase in viscosity of micellar solution at a fixed copolymer concentration, and leads to the formation of stiff gel at F127 concentration as low as 9 wt%. SANS and fluorescence studies attribute this to enhancement in micellar solvation due to solubilization of n-butanol. Quite interestingly, SANS studies show that n-butanol induced F127 gels form at significantly lower micellar volume fraction than the pure F127 gels. The observed improvement in gelation characteristics can have important bearing with the application in making mesoporous materials since n-butanol is used as co-surfactant to control pore size of such structures formed with F127 gels as template.
普朗尼克（®）是一类重要的非离子型表面活性剂，由于其丰富的相行为和众多的工业和生物医学应用。F127，一种获得 FDA 批准的普朗尼克（®），是其中最突出的成员，因为它有作为药物传递载体和介孔材料制备模板的潜在用途。在高于 15wt%浓度的情况下，这种共聚物形成的立方胶束凝胶是这些应用中常用的自组装结构形式。在本文中，我们报告了 SANS、荧光和流变学研究，研究了正丁醇对 F127 水溶液胶凝特性的影响。研究表明，正丁醇的溶解导致在固定共聚物浓度下胶束溶液的粘度大大增加，并导致在 F127 浓度低至 9wt%时形成硬凝胶。SANS 和荧光研究将其归因于正丁醇溶解导致胶束的溶剂化增强。非常有趣的是，SANS 研究表明，与纯 F127 凝胶相比，正丁醇诱导的 F127 凝胶在显著较低的胶束体积分数下形成。所观察到的胶凝特性的改善可能对介孔材料的制备具有重要意义，因为正丁醇作为共表面活性剂用于控制 F127 凝胶作为模板形成的这种结构的孔径。
