Contradiction or Unity? Thermally Stable Fluorescent Probe for In Situ Fast Identification of Self-sort or Co-assembly of Multicomponent Gelators with Sensitive Properties

Analyzing the assembly patterns of multicomponent gelators is important for understanding their assembly rules and precisely manipulating their molecular structure to form a tailored multifunctional supramolecular gel. But the fast in situ recognition technology to infer whether the assembly pattern is a self-sorting or co-assembled system is lacking. For developing a widely applicable stable and sensitive fluorescent probe to infer assembly patterns, we design and synthesize the multiple peripheral functional group tetraphenylethene (TPE) modified well-defined cubic core polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) three-dimensional (3D) dendrimer. POSS-TPE can form a thermally stable self-assembly structure after being incubated in a wide temperature range, and the resultant special thermally stable photoluminescence (PL) intensity provides a novel possibility of fluorescent probe. Then, POSS-TPE sensitively catches the mechanical stress changes of the confined space provided by the gel networks and infers the assembly patterns by comparing the mechanical stress change laws of a self-sorting or co-assembled system. So, the application of fluorescent probe in assembly fields is enlarged in this research. In the future, this widely applicable fluorescent probe will be helpful to develop supramolecular assembly materials consisting of multicomponent gels.

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

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.

Integrated POSS-dendrimer nanohybrid materials: current status and future perspective

Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS)-dendrimer hybrid materials have attracted great interest in the past ten years. The integration of inorganic POSS and organic dendrimer blocks in a single-phase material offers numerous possibilities to access desirable mechanical, optical, and biomedical properties for various applications. In this review article, we describe several kinds of POSS-dendrimer hybrid materials (POSS as the core, surface functionality, repeating unit of dendrimers and the POSS-dendron conjugates) with an emphasis on their synthetic strategies, tunable macroscopic properties, and potential applications. Moreover, the current trends, challenges and future directions of POSS-dendrimer hybrid materials are elaborated.