| Autor: |
Charalampos G, Pappas, Pradeep K, Mandal, Bin, Liu, Brice, Kauffmann, Xiaoming, Miao, Dávid, Komáromy, Waldemar, Hoffmann, Christian, Manz, Rayoon, Chang, Kai, Liu, Kevin, Pagel, Ivan, Huc, Sijbren, Otto |
| Rok vydání: |
2019 |
| Zdroj: |
Nature chemistry. 12(12) |
| ISSN: |
1755-4349 |
| Popis: |
Self-assembly is a powerful method to obtain large discrete functional molecular architectures. When using a single building block, self-assembly generally yields symmetrical objects in which all the subunits relate similarly to their neighbours. Here we report the discovery of a family of self-constructing cyclic macromolecules with stable folded conformations of low symmetry, which include some with a prime number (13, 17 and 23) of units, despite being formed from a single component. The formation of these objects amounts to the production of polymers with a perfectly uniform length. Design rules for the spontaneous emergence of such macromolecules include endowing monomers with a strong potential for non-covalent interactions that remain frustrated in competing entropically favoured yet conformationally restrained smaller cycles. The process can also be templated by a guest molecule that itself has an asymmetrical structure, which paves the way to molecular imprinting techniques at the level of single polymer chains. |
| Databáze: |
OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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