This three-year award provides support for US-France cooperative research on the aggregation, solubilization behavior, and environmental applications of novel surfactants. Surfactants form a class of chemicals finding the widest use in every day life. The collaboration involves the research groups of Ramanathan Nagarajan of Pennsylvania State University and Armand Lattes of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France. The novel surfactants for this project will be developed by the French and studied as media for chemical reactions in preparing new materials, and in pharmaceutical applications. The US investigators will conduct theoretical and experimental studies on the aggregation of these surfactants into micelles and vesicles and their ability to solubilize solutes of varying polarity. The US investigators bring to this collaboration expertise in theoretical modeling and chemical engineering applications of surfactants. This is complemented by French expertise in synthesis and chemical reactivity studies of surfactants.
