Out-of-equilibrium self-assembly approaches for new soft materials

Living creatures exists for an important part out of soft material, such as skin, organs and cells, that are out-of-equilibrium formed by the self-assembly of molecular building blocks. Natural materials are continuously active with dynamic processes occurring, such as growth, shrinkage and transport mechanisms under the consumption of energy....

Self-Assembly of Facial Oligothiophene Amphiphiles

Organized ?-conjugated oligothiophene structures in water are highly promising building blocks to create a vast variety of smart and functional electronic systems. Such materials already found application in biological and chemical sensors, organic light-emitting diodes and photovoltaic devices. The high level of molecular order in such devices...

Multicomponent and Dissipative Self-Assembly Approaches: Towards functional materials

The use of self-assembly has proven to be a powerful approach to create smart and functional materials and has led to a vast variety of successful examples. However, the full potential of self-assembly has not been reached. Despite the number of successful artificial materials based on self-assembly, the corresponding structures do not compete...

Curved Amphipathic Oligothiophenes: Curvature directed S.A. with applications in energy transfer systems and membrane curvature detection in living cells

We have designed and synthesised a new class of molecules which self-assemble based on hydrophobic interactions with an additional driving force for influencing the overall aggregate morphology, namely, molecular curvature. The structure is build from subunits which are substituted with either hydrophilic or hydrophobic substituents. In water,...