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With high-pressure pendant-drop tensiometry, the interfacial tension (γ) and surface excess (Γ∞) for a family of ionic surfactants with identical phosphate headgroups and varying fluorocarbon and hydrocarbon tail structures were examined at the water−CO2 interface. To compensate for the unusually weak CO2−surfactant tail interactions, we designed hydrocarbon tails with weak tail−tail interactions to achieve a more favorable hydrophilic−CO2-philic balance. Branching of hydrocarbon surfactant tails is shown to lead to more favorable adsorption at the interface, closer to that of fluorocarbon surfactants. γ for a double-tail hydrocarbon phosphate surfactant with a relatively high degree of tail branching was lowered from the water−CO2 binary interface value of about 20 mN/m at 25 °C and 340 bar to 3.7 mN/m. This reduction in γ is attributed to both a decrease in the free volume between tails at the interface and reduced tail−tail interactions. In addition to tail structure, the effects of surfactant counterion, salt concentration, temperature, and CO2 density on γ and Γ∞ were investigated. The hydrophilic−CO2-philic balances of these surfactants are mapped by investigating changes in interfacial tension with these formulation variables. Low-molecular-weight branched hydrocarbon ionic surfactants are shown to stabilize concentrated CO2-in-water emulsions for greater than 1 h.

Anionic phosphodiester surfactants, possessing either two fluorinated chains (F/F) or one hydrocarbon chain and one fluorinated chain (H/F), were synthesized and evaluated for solubility and self-assembly in liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide. Several surfactants, of both F/F and H/F types and having varied counterions, were found to be capable of solubilizing water-in-CO2 (W/C), via the formation of microemulsions, expanding upon the family of phosphate fluorosurfactants already found to stabilize W/C microemulsions. Small-angle neutron scattering was used to directly characterize the microemulsion particles at varied temperatures, pressures, and water loadings, revealing behavior consistent with previous results on W/C microemulsions.