title: Morphological Transformation between Nanocoils and Nanoribbons via Defragmentation Structural Rearrangement or Fragmentation-recombination Mechanism.
abstract: Kinetic control over the assembly pathways towards novel metastable functional materials or far-from-equilibrium systems has been much less studied compared to the thermodynamic equilibrium self-assembly. Herein, we report the distinct morphological transformation between nanocoils and nanoribbons in the self-assembly of unsymmetric perylene diimide (PDI) molecules. We demonstrate that the morphological transformation of the kinetically trapped assemblies into the thermodynamically stable forms proceeds via two distinct mechanisms, i.e., a direct structural rearrangement (molecule 1 or 2) and a fragmentation-recombination mechanism (molecule 4), respectively. The subtle interplay of the steric hindrance of the bulky substituents and the flexibility of the linker structure between the bulky moiety and the perylene core was demonstrated to enable the effective modulation of the energetic landscape of the assemblies and thus modulation of the assembly pathways. Herein, our work presents a new approach to control the self-assembly pathways and thereby can be used to achieve novel far-from-equilibrium systems.
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yibin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yingxuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yifan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yanke
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Che
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Jincai
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhao