Rationally designed helical nanofibers via multiple non-covalent interactions: fabrication and modulation

Abstract

Building well-defined hierarchical architectures via supramolecular chemistry is one of the challenges in nanotechnology and is crucial to our understanding of biological self-assembly and biological phenomenon. In this work, a well-ordered one-dimensional (1 D) helix is fabricated with a novel sugar-based lipid by virtue of multiple non-covalent interactions (i.e. hydrophobic interaction, aromatic stacking, and hydrogen bond). The robust helical nanostructure is evidenced by negative-staining TEM, cryo-TEM and circular dichroism (CD). A series of amphiphilic molecules are also synthesized to explore molecular structure-performance relationship and elucidate intermolecular forces that contribute to complex architectures. Moreover, the supramolecular nanohelices in this work are demonstrated to be “smart nanostructures” which can be shaped into spherical micelles, vesicles or unfolded nanofibers by external stimuli, such as pH, light, and surfactant addition.