Excellently guarded materials against UV and oxygen in the surfactant molecular complex crystal matrix

Crystalline surfactant molecular complexes SCMs.generated between quaternary ammonium cationic surfactants such as CTAB and various additives disclose their excellent protective properties from UV light and oxygen to complex additive materials, which are occluded in the complex crystal matrix. The effects of UV and oxygen were followed by the absorption decay of additive chromophores in comparing that of naked additive specimens with that of those in the complexed state. From the decay profiles, the rate constants and the half-life times were estimated under the assumptions in which the photo and oxidation processes were dominated in accordance with the first-ordered reaction. The results afford us promising prospects in extending the shelf-life of every material, above all medicinal drug, with the consequence that these obtained values evidently demonstrate the remarkably suppressed rate and extremely elongated half-life times. q2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.