Study of new ferrocene-based thioureas as potential nonionic surfactants

Abstract Three new thiourea based ferrocenyl surfactants i.e. 1-(decanoyl)-3-(4-ferrocenylphenyl) thiourea ( DP ), 1-(decanoyl)-3-(4-ferrocenyl-2-methylbenzyl) thiourea ( DMth ), 1-(decanoyl)-3-(3-ferrocenylphenyl) thiourea ( DM ) have been successfully synthesized and well characterized by various analytical techniques, such as FT-IR, 1 H and 13 C NMR, AAS and elemental analysis. Furthermore, the single crystal XRD analysis was done for DP . To evaluate their amphiphilic nature, their CMC was determined through UV–visible spectroscopy that varies between 0.05 mM and 0.5 mM. The DP compound possesses lower CMC, whereas DM has considerably higher CMC value. Cyclic voltammetric technique was used to determine their redox behavior around CMC as well as their redox potentials, which follow the same trend as that of CMC. The DFT calculated energies of HOMO and LUMO orbitals correlate well with the experimentally determined redox potentials.