title: Hexagonal Lyotropic Liquid Crystal from Simple "Abiotic" Foldamers.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zhiqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Bian
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Rizhe
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Chuanqing
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xuepeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Haiquan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zhijun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun 130022 P. R. China.
authors.forename: Lianxun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gao
keywords: aggregation; asymmetric synthesis; helices; liquid crystals; supramolecular chemistry