Metallo-vesicles are formed in water medium as a result of the supramolecular arrangement of molybdenum carbonyl metallosurfactants. These new kind of surfactants contain a hydrophobic metal carbonyl fragment and are easily prepared from surfactant phosphine ligands.
New Surfactant Phosphine Ligands and Platinum(II) Metallosurfactants. Influence of Metal Coordination on the Critical Micelle Concentration and Aggregation Properties
lower than those obtained for the free phosphines 1−3. This behavior could be understood by an analogy between the structure of cis-[PtCl2L2] complexes and bolaform surfactants. The calculated values of area per molecule also showed different tendencies between 1−3 and cis-[PtCl2L2] complexes, which could be explained on the basis of the possible conformations of these compounds in the air−water interface
Two families of molybdenum carbonyl metallosurfactants, Mo(CO)(5)L, and Mo(CO)(4)L-2, were synthesized using the functionalized phosphines Ph2P(CH2)(n)SO3Na (n = 2, 6, 10) and characterized by the usual spectroscopic and spectrometric methods. The study of the supramolecular arrangements of these compounds in aqueous medium has been performed by surface tension, fluorescence, dynamic light scattering, cryo-TEM, and small-angle X-ray scattering. All data point to the formation of medium and large vesicular structures with a membrane similar to the classical lipid bilayer, but it contains organometallic fragments instead of simple hydrophobic chains. Studies of CO release with these molybdenum carbonyl metallosurfactants have shown their viability as promising CO-releasing molecules.