This review discusses the rheology of interfaces that separate two, immiscible fluids. Unlike interfaces at the fluid/solid boundary, these surfaces are mobile and deform. In the presence of amphiphiles that collect at these interfaces, they can become highly structured and non-Newtonian. These nonlinear responses to flow have profound implications on many physical processes and examples can be...

The ever-increasing environmental concern about surfactants triggers an interest in natural surfactant. This review, which has an emphasis on work published since 1998, covers three categories of natural surfactants: amphiphiles produced by yeast or bacteria, amphiphiles containing a natural polar headgroup and amphiphiles containing a natural hydrophobic tail. Microorganisms produce both high ...

Selective binding of multivalent ligands within a mixture of polyvalent amphiphiles provides, in principle, a simple mechanism for driving domain formation in self-assemblies. Divalent cations are shown here to crossbridge polyanionic amphiphiles, which thereby demix from neutral amphiphiles and form spots or rafts within vesicles as well as stripes within cylindrical micelles. Calciumand coppe...

Over the past two or three decades, Langmuir monolayers comprising various fluorinated amphiphiles such as perfluorinated, partially fluorinated, and fluorinated-hydrogenated hybrid molecules at the air-water interface, have been investigated to deepen the understanding of their characteristic phenomena and to explore the mutual interaction of these amphiphiles with biomembrane constituents. La...

Novel photolabile amphiphiles containing thioxanthone-based fluorogenic caging groups are developed. Photoinduced fragmentation in dithiane-thioxanthone adducts was demonstrated to occur with 100% quantum efficiency at λ ~ 320 nm and more than 50% at λ ~ 360 nm. A plausible mechanism involves homolytic fission of a carbon-carbon single bond in the excited thioxanthone followed by disproportiona...

Pyruvate oxidase is a peripheral membrane enzyme that can be purified to homogeneity in the absence of detergents. Once removed from the membrane particulate fraction of the cell, the activity of the oxidase in a dye-mediated assay is stimulated ZOto 50-fold by incubation with a wide variety of amphiphiles. Over 120 amphiphilic compounds have been screened for their ability to activate the oxid...

Carbohydrate conjugate rod-coil amphiphiles were synthesized and their self-assembling behavior in aqueous solution was investigated. These amphiphiles were observed to self-assemble into supramolecular structures that differ significantly depending on the molecular architecture. The rod-coil amphiphiles based on a short coil (1) self-assemble into a vesicular structure, while the amphiphiles w...

The goal of this project was to develop a novel technology that may be used to eventually manufacture a new generation of inorganic membranes and sensors with oriented, uni-directional monosized pores. The premise is that very thin membranes with oriented channels as pores will have a high flux in addition to being highly selective. Applications include: 1) gas separation membranes for oxygen e...

The increasing interest in effort towards creating alternative therapies have led to exciting breakthroughs in the attempt to bio-fabricate and engineer live tissues. This has been particularly evident in the development of new approaches applied to reconstruct corneal tissue. The need for tissue-engineered corneas is largely a response to the shortage of donor tissue and the lack of suitable a...