Issue 1, 2021

Driving force balance—the “identity card” of supramolecules in a self-sorting multicomponent assembly system

Abstract

Contrary to the popular belief that multicomponent assembly systems will theoretically co-assemble under the same type of driving forces, two distinct assembly modes from a system composed of two chemically similar supramolecules were demonstrated in this work. Although with exactly the same driving forces, molecule-level self-sorting unexpectedly occurred in this two-component system made of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) core-based supramolecules with one and eight lysine derivative arms. From the experiments, it was concluded that instead of driving force types, driving force counterpoise plays a vital role here, which we called “identity card hypothesis”. The hypothesis suggests that two highly similar components show high affinity for the same molecules through the differentiated “identity card”-like balance of driving forces induced by the difference in the molecular spatial shape, which has never been reported before.

Graphical abstract: Driving force balance—the “identity card” of supramolecules in a self-sorting multicomponent assembly system

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
01 Aug 2020
Accepted
15 Oct 2020
First published
23 Oct 2020

Soft Matter, 2021,17, 153-159

Driving force balance—the “identity card” of supramolecules in a self-sorting multicomponent assembly system

S. Chen, L. Zhou, Z. An, H. He, M. Ma, Y. Shi and X. Wang, Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 153 DOI: 10.1039/D0SM01405B

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