A short review of the scope and limitations of liquid-crystalline behaviour in carbohydrate derivatives is presented. In order to investigate the influence of structure variations on the thermal behaviour of monosaccharide amphiphiles, six homologous series of D-glucose and 2-deoxy-D-glucose derivatives with an aminolinkedn-alkyl chain were prepared. The observed thermal behaviour could be readily explained with the aid of a refinement of the qualitative model that was presented earlier [1]. All compounds were found to be mesogenic, and the observed mesophase was smectic Ad(i.e. a partially overlapping bilayer structure) in all cases.