Surfactants are ubiquitous in formulated products and technologies. As one of the most important commodity chemicals, their remarkable consumption leads to the necessity of finding sustainable alternatives. Although the use of renewable sources limits the available chemical space for a “Green” production, the great variety of naturally occurring precursors, i.e., fatty acids and sugars, opens a myriad of possibilities to create biosurfactants capable of replacing the fatigued fossil-derived amphiphiles. Here, we visit the concept of isomer-directed assembly applied to sugar-based surfactants, wherein amphiphile assembly and function are fine-tuned through changes in the stereochemical and regiochemical configuration of the molecule. As such, we show how isomerism defines directional interactions and solvation, ultimately dictating the assembly of surfactants. However, a general framework to understand the structure-function relationship for these is still missing, which is key to realizing this divergent set of tools for the design of new surfactants.

表面活性剂在配方产品和技术中无处不在。作为最重要的商品化学品之一，其巨大的消耗量导致有必要寻找可持续的替代品。尽管可再生资源的使用限制了“绿色”生产的可用化学空间，但天然存在的前体（即脂肪酸和糖）的种类繁多，为创造能够替代疲劳的化石衍生两亲物的生物表面活性剂提供了无数的可能性。在这里，我们探讨了应用于糖基表面活性剂的异构体定向组装的概念，其中两亲物的组装和功能通过分子的立体化学和区域化学构型的变化进行微调。因此，我们展示了异构现象如何定义定向相互作用和溶剂化，最终决定表面活性剂的组装。然而，仍然缺乏理解这些结构与功能关系的通用框架，而这是实现新型表面活性剂设计的这套不同工具的关键。