Transient Supramolecular Hydrogels Formed by Aging-Induced Seeded Self-Assembly of Molecular Hydrogelators.

Abstract

Here, transient supramolecular hydrogels that are formed through simple aging‐induced seeded self‐assembly of molecular gelators are reported. In the involved molecular self‐assembly system, multicomponent gelators are formed from a mixture of precursor molecules and, typically, can spontaneously self‐assemble into thermodynamically more stable hydrogels through a multilevel self‐sorting process. In the present work, it is surprisingly found that one of the precursor molecules is capable of self‐assembling into nano‐sized aggregates upon a gentle aging treatment. Importantly, these tiny aggregates can serve as seeds to force the self‐assembly of gelators along a kinetically controlled pathway, leading to transient hydrogels that eventually spontaneously convert into thermodynamically more stable hydrogels over time. Such an aging‐induced seeded self‐assembly process is not only a new route toward synthetic out‐of‐equilibrium supramolecular systems, but also suggests the necessity of reporting the age of self‐assembling building block solutions in other self‐assembly systems.