Vesicles: self-assembly beyond biological lipids

Abstract

Self-assembly is a powerful strategy for the development of various intricate supramolecular architectures through non-covalent interactions. Non-covalent interactions can be utilized to produce tubular, vesicular, spherical, fibril, toroidal and helical morphologies. Amongst different types of morphologies, vesicles are of great interest due to their potential use in the drug encapsulation, drug delivery, and as nanoscale reaction vessels. These applications inspired chemists to develop various synthetic molecules that display vesicular self-assembly. This review presents recent examples of synthetic systems that show vesicular self-assembly.