Dielectric studies of self assembling amphiphiles: Part-I: Kirkwood correlation factor of dielectric polarization of amphiphilic acids and alcohols in the solution state

The amphiphilic molecules of alcohols and acids form a two dimensional dipole array on air-water interface. There is a cooperative reorientation involving the average tilt and precisional angles and the surface potential is modified accordingly. The structure of amphiphiles and affinity of the polar groups towards the environmental dipoles determined the stability of the two dimensional array. We report here the orientational correlation factor of dielectric polarization obtained from a study of dielectric constant of amphiphiles in the solution state. The amphiphiles taken for study are tetra decanol, hexa decanol, stearyl alcohol, stearic acid and arachidic acid in 1-4 dioxane. It is shown that there exists a critical number density at which those amphiphiles exist as monomer and at other concentrations the head groups undergo a monomer, n-mer cluster and a non-specific interaction with the solvent.