Self-organised surfactant assemblies as nanostructured dye carriers: a mixed micellar comparative approach for enhanced dye solubilisation

ABSTRACT

The reported work is focused on the solubility of Rhodamine B (cationic dye), as an important methodology to investigate the extent of incorporation or penetration of dye inside the micelles spectroscopically, so the solubilised dye can be filtered via Micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration process to keep our environment safe from toxic effects of industrial effluent. Solutions were prepared by using micellar media of anionic surfactants i.e. Sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), Sodium Oleate (SO) as well as mixed micellar media of said anionics with non-ionic surfactant i.e. Triton X-100 (TX-100). The extent of solubilisation has been, quantitatively, calculated using data of differential spectroscopy, in terms of partition coefficient K_x and Gibbs energy of partition, ∆G_p. It has been observed that mixed micellar media has better solubilisation capacity than micellar solution of individual surfactants. A better micellar solubilisation and ultimately the high Gibbs energy of partition, ∆G_p with SO/TX-100 system i.e. −40.89 as compared to SDS/TX-100 system (−37.03) has been observed due to the presence of long carbon chain in SO.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed micellization
• SDS
• SO
• TX-100
• partition coefficient
• solubilisation
• spectroscopy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Amnah Yusaf and Muhammad Usman highly appreciate financial Support from Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan under National Research Program for Universities (NRPU) for Project No. 20-3367/NRPU/R&D/HEC/14.