Journal article

Rational design of monolayers for improved water evaporation mitigation

Emma L Prime, Diana NH Tran, Michael Plazzer, Devi Sunartio, Andy HM Leung, George Yiapanis, Svetlana Baoukina, Irene Yarovsky, Greg G Qiao, David H Solomon

COLLOIDS AND SURFACES A-PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING ASPECTS | ELSEVIER | Published : 2012

Abstract

Seven chemically designed monolayer compounds were synthesized and investigated with comparison to the properties and water evaporation suppression ability of 1-hexadecanol and 1-octadecanol. Increasing the molecular weight and polarity of the compound headgroup drastically altered the characteristics and performance of the monolayer at the air/water interface. Contrary to the common expectation the monolayer's lifetime on the water surface decreased with increasing number of ethylene oxy moieties, thus optimal performance for water evaporation suppression was achieved when only one ethylene oxy moiety was used. Replacing the hydroxyl headgroup with a methyl group and with multiple ethylene ..

View full abstract

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

The financial support of The Cooperative Research Centre for Polymers (CRC-P) and the Australian Research Council (ARC Discovery scheme, project DP110101604) is gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge Advanced Molecular Technologies Pty. Ltd. who synthesized the required molecules for us. High performance computing resources granted through the merit allocation scheme by the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) facility provided by the Australian Government are also gratefully acknowledged.