Self-assembly of supramolecular polymers in water from tetracationic and tetraanionic monomers in water through cooperative electrostatic attraction and aromatic stacking

Abstract

The cooperative electrostatic attraction and π-π aromatic stacking interactions between tetrahedral tetrapyridinium TP and three tetraanionic tetraphenylethylene derivatives TPE-1∼3 led to the formation of a new kind of supramolecular polymer networks in water, which have been confirmed by 1H NMR, fluorescence, isothermal titration calorimetric (ITC) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments. ITC studies show that the contributions of enthalpy and entropy were comparable, reflecting the importance of hydrophobicity in driving the intermolecular aromatic stacking. DLS experiments indicate that the linear supramolecular polymers formed by these tetratopic monomers further aggregated into networks of 102-nm size.