13795 IUPAC Gold Book - amphiphile 10.1351/goldbook.13795 13795 current 1 Substance made up of molecules containing groups that are solvophilic and other groups that are solvophobic with respect to a given solvent. Depending upon the nature of the solvent, the solvophilic and solvophobic parts of the molecule may be ionic or non-ionic moieties. The term is most commonly applied to molecules in aqueous media within which the existence of distinct polar (hydrophilic) and nonpolar (hydrophobic) regions in the molecule promotes the formation of micelles, vesicles, or aggregates. hydrophobic https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13831 solvophilic https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13865 solvophobic https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13866 PAC, 2012, 85, 463. 'Terminology for aggregation and self-assembly in polymer science (IUPAC Recommendations 2013)' on page 464 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-12-03-12) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13795/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13795/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13795/plain Citation: 'amphiphile' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.13795 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-09T16:31:19+00:00