Hierarchical self-assembly of amphiphilic building blocks into various supramolecular architectures

Abstract

Molecular self-assembly is a process to obtain a well defined structure from suitable starting materials. The study of self-assembly provides a fundamental understanding of the driving forces and co-operative interaction behind these processes. Among the plenty of molecules, an amphiphilic molecule, containing both hydrophilic and hydrophobic counter parts is one of the interesting building blocks to study the self-assembly processes. In this short review, the hierarchical self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules into various supramolecular architectures such as vesicles, spheres, flowers, tubes and fibrillar networks of nano- to micrometer dimensions and gels have been discussed.