Hierarchically Compartmentalized Supramolecular Gels through Multilevel Self-Sorting.
Yiming Wang, Matija Lovrak, Qian Liu, Chandan Maity, Vincent A A le Sage, Xuhong Guo, Rienk Eelkema, Jan H van Esch
Author Information
Yiming Wang: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands. ORCID
Matija Lovrak: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands.
Qian Liu: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands.
Chandan Maity: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands.
Vincent A A le Sage: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands.
Xuhong Guo: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering , East China University of Science and Technology , Shanghai 200237 , China. ORCID
Rienk Eelkema: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands. ORCID
Jan H van Esch: Department of Chemical Engineering , Delft University of Technology , van der Maasweg 9 , 2629 HZ Delft , The Netherlands. ORCID
Hierarchical compartmentalization through the bottom-up approach is ubiquitous in living cells but remains a formidable task in synthetic systems. Here we report on hierarchically compartmentalized supramolecular gels that are spontaneously formed by multilevel self-sorting. Two types of molecular gelators are formed in situ from nonassembling building blocks and self-assemble into distinct gel fibers through a kinetic self-sorting process; interestingly, these distinct fibers further self-sort into separated microdomains, leading to microscale compartmentalized gel networks. Such spontaneously multilevel self-sorting systems provide a "bottom-up" approach toward hierarchically structured functional materials and may play a role in intracellular organization.
References
Mol Cell. 2015 Mar 5;57(5):936-947
[PMID: 25747659]
