Novel bis(aminoalcohol)oxalamide organogelators and their diglycolylamide analogs: evaluation of gelation efficiency in various organic fluids

Three modular types of bis(aminoalcohol)oxalamides (1, 4, and 7) and bis(aminoalcohol)diglycolylamide (8) gelators have been prepared by the reaction of the respective aminoalcohols with oxalyl and digycolyl methylesters as potential low-molecular-weight organogelators. The gelation properties of these amides have been evaluated in various aromatic organic solvents (xylene, toluene, isopropyl benzene, and aromatic ether type organic fluids such as anisole or alpha-phenylethylmethylether) as well as the long-chain aliphatic alcohols (1-hexanol, 1-octanol, 2-octanol, and aromatic 1-phenylethanol). The compounds with sec-butyl and ethyl side chains produce good gelation properties in both aromatic and other organic fluids. Furthermore, the common oxalamide linker present in the gelators was replaced by an extended diglycolylamide linker (8) and its behaviors were compared with the benzylic oxalamide analog (3). The gelator (8) gives the best results with aromatic fluid and lauric acid ethyl ester. H-1 NMR studies reveal the existence of temperature dependent network assembly/dissolution equilibrium and produce K-gel. FTIR was employed to see the effect of hydrogen bonding in the formation of gel network. Thermodynamic parameters regarding gel-to-sol transition were collected with van't Hoff relationships.