Reinforcing Supramolecular Bonding with Magnetic Dipole Interactions to Assemble Dynamic Nanoparticle Superlattices
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An efficient strategy for designing charge-transfer complexes using coinage metal cyclic trinuclear complexes (CTCs) is described herein. Due to opposite quadrupolar electrostatic contributions from metal ions and ligand substituents, [Au(m-Pz-(i-C 3 H7) 2 )] 3 ∙[Ag(m-Tz-(n-C 3 F 7 ) 2 )] 3 (Pz = pyrazolate, Tz = triazolate) has been obtained and its structure verified by single crystal X-ray diffraction – representing the 1st crystallographically-verified M 3 @M' 3 stacked adduct of monovalent coinage metal CTCs. Abundant supramolecular interactions with aggregate covalent bonding strength arise from a combination of M–M' (Au / Ag), metal–π, π–π interactions and hydrogen bonding in this charge-transfer complex, according to density functional theory analyses, yielding a computed binding energy of 66 kcal mol -1 between the two trimer moieties – a large value for intermolecular interactions between adjacent d 10 centres (nearly doubling the value for a recently claimed Au(I) / Cu(I) polar-covalent bond: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 2017, 114, E5042) – which becomes 87 kcal mol -1 with benzene stacking. Surprisingly, DFT analysis suggests that: (a) some other literature precedents should have attained a stacked M 3 @M' 3 product akin to the one herein, with similar or even higher binding energy; and (b) a high overall intertrimer bonding energy by inferior electrostatic assistance, underscoring genuine orbital overlap between M and M' frontier molecular orbitals in such polar-covalent M–M' bonds in this family of molecules. The Au / Ag bonding is reminiscent of classical Werner-type coordinate-covalent bonds such as H 3 N: → Ag in [Ag(NH 3 ) 2 ] + , as demonstrated herein quantitatively. Solidstate and molecular modeling illustrate electron flow from the p-basic gold trimer to the p-acidic silver trimer with augmented contributions from ligand-to-ligand’ (LL'CT) and metal-to-ligand (MLCT) charge transfer.
Supramolecular polymer sorting is a promising approach to separating single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by electronic type. Unlike conjugated polymers, they can be easily removed from the CNTs after sorting by breaking the supramolecular bonds, allowing for isolation of electronically pristine CNTs as well as facile recycling of the sorting polymer. However, little is understood about how supramolecular polymer properties affect CNT sorting. Herein, chain stoppers are used to engineer the conformation of a supramolecular sorting polymer, thereby elucidating the relationship between sorting efficacy and polymer conformation. Through NMR and UV–vis spectroscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and thermodynamic modeling, it is shown that this supramolecular polymer exhibits ring–chain equilibrium, and that this equilibrium can be skewed toward chains by the addition of chain stoppers. Furthermore, by controlling the stopper–monomer ratio, the sorting yield can be doubled from 7% to 14% without compromising the semiconducting purity (>99%) or properties of sorted CNTs.
Previous studies have shown that copolymer compositions can significantly impact self-healing properties. This was accomplished by enhancement of van der Waals (vdW) forces which facilitate self-healing in relatively narrow copolymer compositional range. In this work we report the acceleration of self-healing in alternating/random hydrophobic acrylic-based copolymers in the presence of confined water molecules. Under these conditions competing vdW interactions do not allow H 2 O-diester H-bonding, thus forcing nBA side groups to adapt L-shape conformations, generating stronger dipole-dipole interactions resulting in shorter inter-chain distances compared to ‘key-and-lock’ associations without water. The perturbation of vdW forces upon mechanical damage in the presence of controllable amount of confined water is energetically unfavorable leading the enhancement of self-healing efficiency of hydrophobic copolymers by a factor of three. The concept may be applicable to other self-healing mechanisms involving reversible covalent bonding, supramolecular chemistry, or polymers with phase-separated morphologies.
Staudinger established a century ago the existence of covalent macromolecules, work that led to the development of transformative materials of great benefit to society and a “quantum leap” in our understanding of biological systems. Over the past few decades the concept of supramolecular polymers has emerged–chemical systems in which structural units bond strongly to each other non-covalently. Herein, we discuss how these dynamic systems actually exist in the natural world and can create soft materials with structures, properties, and functions beyond the ones we know in Staudinger polymers. We reflect here on the potential of novel systems in which covalent and supramolecular polymers are chemically integrated and describe them as hybrid bonding polymers. This paper describes the concept with recent examples from the Stupp laboratory, and discusses their potential functions as robotic materials that mimic living matter and structures that offer new ideas on how to recycle and reuse soft materials.
Peptide amphiphiles (PAs) are a class of molecules comprised of short amino acid sequences conjugated to hydrophobic moieties that may exhibit self-assembly in water into supramolecular structures. Here, we investigate here how mechanical properties of hydrogels formed by PA supramolecular nanofibers are affected by hydrogen bond densities within their internal structure by substituting glycine for aza-glycine (azaG) residues. We found that increasing the number of PA molecules that contain azaG up to 5 mol% in PA supramolecular nanofibers increases their persistence length fivefold and decreases their diffusion coefficients as measured by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. When these PAs are used to create hydrogels, their bulk storage modulus (G') was found to increase as azaG PA content in the supramolecular assemblies increases up to a value of 10 mol% and beyond this value a decrease was observed, likely due to diminished levels of nanofiber entanglement in the hydrogels as a direct result of increased supramolecular rigidity. Interestingly, we found that the bioactivity of the scaffolds toward dopaminergic neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells can be enhanced directly by persistence length independently of storage modulus. We hypothesize that this is due to interactions between the cells and the extracellular environment across different size scales: from filopodia adhering to individual nanofiber bundles to cell adhesion sites that interact with the hydrogel as a bulk substrate. Fine tuning of hydrogen bond density in self-assembling peptide biomaterials such as PAs provides an approach to control nanoscale stiffness as part of an overall strategy to optimize bioactivity in these supramolecular systems. supramolecular biomaterials.
Supramolecular polymers, bonded through directional non-covalent interactions, closely mimic dynamic behaviors of biological nanofibers. However, the complexity of assembly pathways makes it highly challenging to unravel the nature of supramolecular dynamics in aqueous environments. Here we introduce a precise combinatorial titration methodology to probe in situ the assembly of peptide amphiphiles (PAs). This approach reveals a binary assembly mechanism governed by equilibrium between spheroidal micelles and β-sheet polymers. Weakening hydrogen bonding shifts the equilibrium towards micelles and decreases the internal structural order of filamentous polymers, promoting supramolecular dynamics. Extending this methodology to two-component copolymerization systems, we find a surprising tendency to form blocky nanostructures with reduced internal phase separation as the mismatch in peptide sequence decreases. Interestingly, while well-mixed copolymers acquire different dynamics, mismatched ones retain the characteristic supramolecular motion of their homopolymer counterparts. These critical insights into supramolecular dynamics offer strategies to tailor the dynamic functions of supramolecular nanomaterials.
Here, the development of heterogeneous materials, catalysts, and semiconductors is often reliant on precise control of self-assembly and crystal packing. Many new materials are initially synthesized as microcrystalline powders, making them incompatible with typical methods of structure determination, such as single-crystal X-ray diffraction. This resultant lack of structural information has made thorough investigation into the effect of metal substitution on crystal structure in metal-organic chalcogenolates (MOChas) challenging. Here, we use small molecule serial femtosecond crystallography (smSFX) to present the structures of four copper n-alkanethiolates: CuSC4, CuSC5, CuSC6, and CuSC7. Divergent patterns of alkyl chain packing are identified from microcrystalline powders via smSFX. An odd-even effect in crystal packing has been identified and attributed to different orientations of symmetry elements in the even- and odd-numbered chains. This results in minute changes in the azimuthal organization of the even-numbered chains and the network of cuprophilic interactions. Additionally, we present a synthesis of crystalline gold n-alkanethiolates to provide the first comparison between three d 10 coinage metals (Cu, Ag, and Au) and their resultant n-alkanethiolates.
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Understanding how chemical modifications alter the atomic‐scale organization of materials is of fundamental importance in materials engineering and the target of considerable efforts in computational prediction. Incorporating covalent and noncovalent interactions in designing crystals while “piggybacking” on the driving force of molecular self‐assembly has augmented efforts to understand the emergence of complex structures using directed synthesis. In this work, microcrystalline powders of the silver 2‐, 3‐, and 4‐fluorobenzenethiolates are prepared and their structures are resolved by small‐molecule serial femtosecond X‐ray crystallography. These three compounds enable the emergence and role of supramolecular synthons in the crystal structures of 3D metal‐organic chalcogenolates to be examined. The unique divergence in their optoelectronic, morphological, and structural behaviors is assessed. The extent of CHF interactions and their influence on the structure and the observed trends in the thermal stability of the crystals are quantified through theoretical calculations and thermogravimetric analysis.
The liquid–liquid interface provides a promising platform to construct supramolecular polymers and materials with advanced functions. However, supramolecular polymerization at the interface usually requires monomers with different or even orthogonal solubilities, which significantly limit the number of usable monomers. Here, in this work, we report a new strategy to construct supramolecular polymer networks at the oil–water interface using a water-soluble catechol–iron complex and an oil-soluble diend-functionalized polymer. Owing to the dynamic catechol–iron coordination bond and imine bond, the resulting supramolecular polymer networks demonstrate excellent dynamic features and responsiveness to different stimuli including the pH, redox, competing ligands, and temperature. With a supramolecular polymer network serving as a building block, emulsions and 2D films can be generated that have potential applications in encapsulation, release, and molecular separation.
Shape memory polymers are promising materials in many emerging applications due to their large extensibility and excellent shape recovery. However, practical application of these polymers is limited by their poor energy densities (up to ~1 MJ/m 3 ). Here, we report an approach to achieve a high energy density, one-way shape memory polymer based on the formation of strain-induced supramolecular nanostructures. As polymer chains align during strain, strong directional dynamic bonds form, creating stable supramolecular nanostructures and trapping stretched chains in a highly elongated state. Upon heating, the dynamic bonds break, and stretched chains contract to their initial disordered state. This mechanism stores large amounts of entropic energy (as high as 19.6 MJ/m 3 or 17.9 J/g), almost six times higher than the best previously reported shape memory polymers while maintaining near 100% shape recovery and fixity. The reported phenomenon of strain-induced supramolecular structures offers a new approach toward achieving high energy density shape memory polymers.
To ascertain the influence of binary ligand systems [1,1-dicyanoethylene-2,2-dithiolate (i-mnt -2 ) and polyamine {tetraen = tris(2-aminoethyl)amine, tren = diethylene triamine and opda = o-phenylenediamine}] on the coordination modes of the Ni(II) metal center and resulting supramolecular architectures, a series of nickel(II) thiolate complexes [Ni(tetraen)(i-mnt)](DMSO) (1), [Ni 2 (tren) 2 (i-mnt) 2 ] (2), and [Ni 2 (i-mnt) 2 (opda) 2 ] n (3) have been synthesized in high yield in one step in water and structurally characterized by single crystal X-ray crystallography and spectroscopic techniques. X-ray diffraction studies disclose the diverse i-mnt -2 coordination to the Ni +2 center in the presence of active polyamine ligands, forming a slightly distorted octahedral geometry (NiN 4 S 2 ) in 1, square planar (NiS 4 ) and distorted octahedral geometries (NiN 6 ) in the bimetallic co-crystallized aggregate of cationic [Ni(tren) 2 ] +2 and anionic [Ni(i-mnt) 2 ] -2 in 2, and a one dimensional (1D) polymeric chain along the [100] axis in 3, having consecutive square planar (NiS 4 ) and octahedral (NiN 6 ) coordination kernels. The N–H···O, N–H···S, N–H···N, N–H···S, N–H···N, and N–H···O type hydrogen bonds stabilize the supramolecular assemblies in 1, 2, and 3 respectively imparting interesting graph-set-motifs. The molecular Hirshfeld surface analyses (HS) and 2D fingerprint plots were utilized for decoding all types of non-covalent contacts in the crystal networks. Atomic HS analysis of the Ni +2 centers reveals significant Ni–N metal–ligand interactions compared to Ni–S interactions. We have also studied the unorthodox interactions observed in the solid state structures of 1–3 by QTAIM and NBO analyses. Moreover, all the complexes proved to be highly active water reduction co-catalysts (WRC) in a photo-catalytic hydrogen evolution process involving iridium photosensitizers, wherein 2 and 3 having a square planar arrangement around the nickel center(s) – were found to be the most active ones, achieving 1000 and 1119 turnover numbers (TON), respectively.
Abstract The design of robotic soft matter capable of emulating the complex movements of living organisms such as mechanical actuation, shape transformation, and autonomous translation remains a grand challenge in soft materials science. Functionalized hydrogels are excellent candidates for such materials since they can operate in water and are highly responsive to their environment, but their response times can be slow. This work investigates fast photoactuation of hybrid bonding hydrogels composed of peptide amphiphile (PA) supramolecular nanofibers bonded covalently to merocyanine‐based (MCH + ) photoresponsive networks. By incorporating ionizable acrylic acid (AA) co‐monomers in these networks, photoactuation at nearly neutral pH is observed, which in turn enables a new mechanism to accelerate the response by triggering the bundling of supramolecular nanofibers by rapid proton exchange reactions. Furthermore, this rapid response and its consequent large shape transformations lead to hydrogels capable of spontaneously tracking external light sources inspired by pedicellariae, defensive organs present in echinoderms like the starfish and the sea urchin. This work suggests that hybrid bonding polymers (HBPs), which leverage the interplay between supramolecular assemblies and covalent networks, offer novel strategies to design rapidly actuating soft robotic materials.
Block copolymers (BCPs) can spontaneously self-assemble into various nanostructured morphologies which enable their diverse applications in selective membranes, polymer electrolytes, and optoelectronics. To expand the range of nanostructures accessible to block copolymers, we designed dynamic block copolymers (DBCPs) that combine the phase separation of traditional block copolymers with the supramolecular self-assembly of periodic dynamic polymers. We demonstrate that DBCPs synthesized with a periodic block sequence self-assemble into high aspect ratio supramolecular nanofibers with well-ordered PEG and PDMS domains, in contrast to those synthesized with a random sequence which do not form nanofibers but have disordered morphologies. The periodicity of the block sequence ensures regular placement of dynamic bonds along the polymer chain, which enables stacking of the hydrogen bonding units into ordered 1D supramolecular nanofibers and delays the onset of terminal flow by up to 60 °C compared to the random block sequence. The hierarchically assembled supramolecular nanofibers display complex mechanical and thermal phase behavior arising from the interplay between phase separation of the dissimilar polymer backbones and supramolecular interactions between dynamic bonds. Despite identical bulk composition, the periodic DBCPs demonstrate ionic conductivity values over two orders of magnitude higher than their random counterparts due to the formation of well-ordered, interconnected, high aspect ratio ion-transporting PEG domains. In conclusion, these results highlight the potential for DBCPs as an emerging material platform to achieve advanced, self-assembled nanostructured morphologies.