Adsorption behavior and application performance of branched aliphatic alcohol polyoxyethylene ether phosphate

Phosphate ester surfactants has been extensively studied in the recent past. However, the information on detailed studies on branched alcohol ether phosphates is only sparsely reported in the literature. To help cover this gap in the research of branched alcohol ether phosphates, in this article, branched alcohol ether phosphates (A(13)E(5)P, A(10)E(5)P) as the main research object and linear alcohol ether phosphates (A(12)E(5)P) as the control group. By measuring the static surface tension (SST), dynamic surface tension (DST) and dynamic contact angle (DCA) of the samples, the adsorption performance of AEP with different hydrophobic structures was studied. Studies have shown that the branching structure strengthens the hydrophobic effect, which brought lower surface tension, higher surface activity, and more excellent wetting properties. And it is found that the change of ionic strength has a greater effect on the branched AEP. In addition, the branched AEP showed better permeability, while linear AEP showed better foam performance, antistatic performance and softness. This paper shows that the branched structure of AEP is beneficial to improve the adsorption performance of the gas-liquid interface, but not to the adsorption of the solid-liquid interface.