“Designing reactive supramolecular nanostructures”
Small molecule self-assembly is an established route for producing high surface-area nanostructures with readily customizable chemistries and precise molecular organization. However, these structures are fragile, exhibiting molecular exchange, migration, and rearrangement (among other dynamic instabilities), and ultimately disassociate upon drying. These dynamic instabilities can be controlled, but first the internal conformational dynamics must be understood. In this seminar, I will discuss experimental strategies used and developed in our group to measure dynamics within molecular self-assemblies with sub-nanometer resolution. Then I will discuss a new self-assembly platform designed in my group, the aramid amphiphile (AA), that forms nanoribbons with suppressed internal dynamics. I will describe how we exploit their extraordinary stability to generate reactive nanostructures for new applications.