Cationic surfactants are extensively involved in various nanotechnological strategies focusing on the development of drug and gene carriers, micellar catalysts, emulsifiers, inhibitors of corrosion, etc. Therefore much attention is devoted to the correlation of their chemical structure with aggregation and functional activity. At the present work we focused on the polyfunctional systems based on mono- and dicationic surfactants with morpholinium fragment in their head group. Study of the aggregation behaviour and catalytic activity toward the cleavage of p-nitrophenyl esters of carbonic acids of different hydrophobicity has been carried out in the presence of the surfactants. The catalytic effect increases with the alkyl chain length of surfactants and depends on the structure of the head group. Catalytic effect of gemini surfactants is higher as compared to conventional analogs; it realizes at lower concentrations and is characterized by a marked substrate specificity.
The morpholinium surfactants were used for the complexation of oligonucleotide. The formation of the lipoplex was monitored by the dynamic light scattering and fluorescent spectroscopy. Compaction of oligonucleotide and the neutralization of anionic phosphate groups in the presence of morpholinium surfactants suggest that these compounds may act as nonviral vectors.
It was established that the morpholinium surfactants are effective inhibitors of hydrogen sulfide corrosion. Besides they are characterized by a high bactericidal activity toward sulfate-reducing bacteria and demonstrate a pronounced bacteriostatic and fungistatic effect.
Acknowledgements. This work is partially supported by RFBR, project no. 12-03-97066.
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