🔬 1. Personal Care and Daily Chemical Products

This is the most mature and primary application area for N-lauroyl-L-glutamic acid.

• Cleansing Products: Due to its mildness and low irritation, it is often used as a base ingredient in facial cleansers, shower gels, and shampoos, making it suitable for sensitive skin and eczema sufferers. Adding it to traditional soaps can improve their hard water resistance and foaming effect.

• Skin Care Products: Its derivatives (such as N-lauroyl glutamate sterol ester) are similar to intercellular lipids in skin cells, providing good moisturizing effects and minimizing protein denaturation. Therefore, it is often used in creams, lotions, and other skin care products.

• Oral Care: It can be used as a foaming agent in tooth powder, providing a pleasant user experience.

⚗️ 2. Scientific Research Applications
In the laboratory, its unique physicochemical properties have led to its use in various cutting-edge research projects.

• Organic Gel Research: It can be used as a low-molecular-weight gelling agent to form stable gels in organic solvents, for studying gelation properties, drug controlled-release systems, or biomaterial structures. • Liquid Crystal Materials Research: It can form cholesteric liquid crystal phases in specific solvents, used for fundamental research on liquid crystal properties.

• Biomedical Research: Its functionalized derivatives are used to prepare antibacterial materials to combat medical device-related infections. Some derivatives also exhibit immunostimulatory properties at extremely low concentrations, used in related research.

• Enzymology and Biochemistry Research: Some microbial enzymes have specific hydrolytic effects on it, making it a substrate for studying enzyme catalysis mechanisms.

• Pharmaceutical Formulation Research: It can be used as a solubilizer to improve the solubility of poorly soluble drugs in water, optimizing drug formulations.

🏭 3. Industrial and Other Applications

• Industrial Surfactants: Utilizing its surface activity, it can be used as a synthetic fiber oiling agent, softener, dyeing auxiliary agent, and metal rust inhibitor. In the petroleum industry, due to its high-temperature and salt resistance, it is being studied as an environmentally friendly surfactant to enhance oil recovery.

• Industrial lubricants: Their derivatives (such as N-lauroyl glutamine) can be used as high-performance additives to significantly improve the load-bearing, anti-wear, and friction-reducing properties of vegetable oils.