Hexagonal Lyotropic Liquid Crystal from Simple “Abiotic” Foldamers

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• 作者：Yu Chen ; Zhiqiang Zhao ; Dr. Zheng Bian ; Dr. Rizhe Jin ; Dr. Chuanqing Kang ; Dr. Xuepeng Qiu ; Dr. Haiquan Guo ; Dr. Zhijun Du and Dr. Lianxun Gao
• 刊名：ChemistryOpen
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：August 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：5
• 期：4
• 页码：386-394
• 全文大小：2981K
• ISSN：2191-1363

文摘

The motivation of foldamer chemistry is to identify novel building blocks that have the potential to imitate natural species. Peptides and peptide mimetics can form stable helical conformations and further self-assemble into diverse aggregates in water, where it is difficult to isolate a single helix. In contrast, most “abiotic” foldamers may fold into helical structures in solution, but are difficult to assemble into tertiary ones. It remains a challenge to obtain “abiotic” species similar to peptides. In this paper, a novel foldamer scaffold, in which p-phenyleneethynylene units are linked by chiral carbon atoms, was designed and prepared. In very dilute solutions, these oligomers were random coils. The hexamer and octamers could form a hexagonal lyotropic liquid crystal (LC) in CH₂Cl₂ when the concentrations reached the critical values. The microscopic observations indicated that they could assemble into the nanofibers in the LC. Interestingly, after some LC phases were diluted at room temperature, the nanofibers could be preserved. The good stabilities of the assemblies are possibly attributed to a more compact backbone and more rigid side chains.