Gels are a fascinating class of soft matter and have surged tremendous interest for their intriguing properties and potential applications in cosmetics, food processing, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. The present work addresses an amino acid-derived steroidal low-molecular-mass gelator that can efficiently gel a wide spectrum of liquids, including edible oils, mineral oils (as shown in the figure), organic solvents, and aqueous-organic mixtures at reasonably low concentrations (&lt; 2 w/w %). The gelator was found to selectively gel aromatic and chlorinated solvents from their biphasic mixtures with water, thus affording a method for separation and removal of organic pollutants from water beneficial for industries. To the best of our knowledge, no such versatile gelator is known in the prior art that can gel such a large number of liquids. Further, the organogels and in particular, oleogels have shown excellent entrapment efficiency for a number of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The gels were characterized by use of optical and electron microscopy, and rheological measurements.

Gelation of vegetable and mineral oils by an efficient and versatile low-molecular-mass gelator

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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