The research topic is Low surface energy materials (LSEMs), and development of new hydrocarbon (HC) architectures as replacements for environmentally hazardous fluorocarbon surfactants and polymers. The aim is to explore how chain branching and substituted cations affect structural behavior of the surfactants in aqueous solutions. The surfactants of interest are shown in Figure 1: the subtle structural modifications in the tails and head, feed through to significant effects on surface tension. Analyses of tensiometric data (Table 1) indicate that higher branching factor and increasing counterion size promotes an effective surface tension reduction (e.g. ref 9). This project is supported by a G8 Governments grant: New low surface energy materials LSEMs G8 Research Councils Initiative on Multilateral Research Funding, EPSRC grant code: EP/K020676/1.