How thermotropic properties influence the formation of lyotropic aggregates near the critical micelle concentration

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the lyotropic aggregation behaviour in dilute solutions of two synthetic glycolipids with same alkyl chain. The chemical structure of the carbohydrate headgroups is similar, nevertheless as reported the thermotropic phase behaviour is different. We found that the slightly tilted compound showing a complex thermotropic phase behaviour forms large aggregates with substructure already in dilute solutions and the significantly tilted compound with its simple thermotropic phase behaviour forms small spherical micelles near the CMC.