The study of supramolecular polymers in the bulk, in diluted solution, and at the solid–liquid interface has recently become a major topic of interest, going from fundamental aspects to applications in materials science. However, examples of supramolecular polymers at the liquid–liquid interface are mostly unexplored. Here, we describe the supramolecular polymerization of triarylamine molecules and their light-triggered organization at a chloroform–water interface. The resulting interfacial nematic layer of these 1D supramolecular polymers is further used as a template for the precise alignment of spherical gold nanoparticles coming from the water phase. These hybrid thin films are spontaneously formed in a single process, without chemical prefunctionalization of the metallic nanoparticles, and their ordering is improved by centrifugation. The resulting polymer chains and strings of nanoparticles can be co-aligned with high anisotropy over very large distances. By using a combination of experimental and theoretical investigations, we decipher the full sequence of this oriented self-assembly process. In such a highly anisotropic configuration, electron energy loss spectroscopy reveals that the self-assembled nanoparticles behave as plasmonic waveguides.

Upon cooling in solution, chiral triarylamine tris‐amide unimers produce organogels by stacking into helical supramolecular polymers, which subsequently bundle into larger fibers. Interestingly, circular dichroism, vibrational circular dichroism, and AFM imaging of the chiral self‐assemblies revealed that monocolumnar P‐helical fibrils formed upon fast cooling, whereas bundled M‐superhelical fibers formed upon slow cooling. The mechanistic study of this structural bifurcation reveals the presence of a strong memory effect, reminiscent of a complex stepwise combination of primary and secondary nucleation‐growth processes. These results highlight the instrumental role of sequential self‐assembly processes to control supramolecular architectures of multiple hierarchical order.

Gaining control over supramolecular polymerization mechanisms is of high fundamental interest to understand self‐assembly and self‐organization processes at the nanoscale. It is also expected to significantly impact the design and improve the efficiency of advanced materials and devices. Up to now, supramolecular polymerization has been shown to take place from unimers in solution, mainly by variations of temperature or of concentration. Reported here is that supramolecular nucleation‐growth of triarylamine monomers can be triggered by electrochemistry in various solvents. The involved mechanism offers new opportunities to precisely address in space and time the nucleation of supramolecular polymers at an electrode. To illustrate the potential of this methodology, supramolecular nanowires are grown an oriented over several tens of micrometers between different types of commercially available electrodes submitted to a single DC electric field, reaching a precision unprecedented in the literature.

The immense discriminative capacity of the human olfactory chemosensory systems relies on the generation of a combinatorial signal in response to the interaction of a particular odorant molecule with many different olfactory receptors. In this work, we report the generation of distributional signals by the action of particular effectors, here metal cations, on dynamic covalent libraries (DCLs) of receptor molecules, here ligands for metal cations. Different effectors are discriminated by the formation of different constitutional distributions, which result from the adaptation of the DCL to the action of a particular cation effector through the selection and exchange of components. Compartmentalization by operation in a system of immiscible solvents (here water and chloroform) results in a 3D constitutional dynamic network (CDN), effecting distributional signal and information transfer between two domains, through the interface from the "writing" input phase (the IN-phase) and the "reading" output phase (the OUT-phase). Here, it is not the selectivity of a specific recognition process between a particular DCL member and a given effector that is key to the information processing, but the change in the distribution of the components and constituents, a dynamic pattern or f ingerprint, induced in one phase in response to interaction with a given effector binding and transmitted to the other phase by component and constituent exchange across the phase boundary. Finally, the pattern recognition techniques such as hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were successfully applied to analyze the output generated by the action of different effectors on the higher order [5 × 5] DCL. Discrimination between different effectors was characterized by specific domains. Such data processing also opens the way toward extension to much larger DCLs.

The self-assembly of chiral supramolecular polymers is an intricate process that spans a wide range of length scales. Circular dichroism techniques are ideal to study this process as they provide information on the molecular scale but are at the same time also sensitive probes of the long-range interactions that control the growth and morphology of these polymers. As yet, Electronic Circular Dichroism that uses electronic transitions as a probe has by far been the method of choice while Vibrational Circular Dichroism, which uses vibrational transitions to probe structure, is much less employed. Here, we report experimental and theoretical studies of the self-assembly of helical supramolecular polymers of (S)triarylamine tris-amides ((S)-TATA) in which both techniques are applied in concert. Theoretical studies based on quantum chemical calculations and on simplified models that allow for extrapolation to "infinitely" long polymers provide a solid basis for interpreting results from each of the two techniques that on their own would appear to be contradictory. In the particular case of (S)-TATA it is shown that upon equilibration the initially formed fibers undergo a conformational transition that becomes only "visible" by the combination of the two techniques. Our studies thus show that combining electronic and vibrational domains offers a unique and complementary means to probe these polymers, precisely because they are sensitive to different aspects of molecular and polymeric structure.

Gaining control over supramolecular polymerization mechanisms is of high fundamental interest to understand self-assembly and self-organization processes at the nanoscale.Itisalso expected to significantly impact the design and improve the efficiency of advanced materials and devices. Up to now, supramolecular polymerization has been shown to take place from unimers in solution, mainly by variations of temperature or of concentration. Reported here is that supramolecular nucleation-growth of triarylamine monomers can be triggered by electrochemistry in various solvents.T he involved mechanism offers new opportunities to precisely address in space and time the nucleation of supramolecular polymers at an electrode.T oi llustrate the potential of this methodology,s upramolecular nanowires are grown an oriented over several tens of micrometers between different types of commercially available electrodes submitted to asingle DC electric field, reaching ap recision unprecedented in the literature.

Phase transfer of Cu(ii) cations is achieved by component exchange in a dynamic covalent library of acylhydrazone ligands. B1/B2 component exchange leads to the generation of a lipophilic carrier agent that extracts Cu(ii) into chloroform.

Dynamic combinatorial libraries (DCLs) display adaptive behavior, enabled by the reversible generation of their molecular constituents from building blocks, in response to external effectors, e.g., protein receptors. So far, chemoinformatics has not yet been used for the design of DCLswhich comprise a radically different set of challenges compared to classical library design. Here, we propose a chemoinformatic model for theoretically assessing the composition of DCLs in the presence and the absence of an effector. An imine-based DCL in interaction with the effector human carbonic anhydrase II (CA II) served as a case study. Support vector regression models for the imine formation constants and imine-CA II binding were derived from, respectively, a set of 276 imines synthesized and experimentally studied in this work and 4350 inhibitors of CA II from ChEMBL. These models predict constants for all DCL constituents, to feed software assessing equilibrium concentrations. They are publicly available on the dedicated website. Models rationally selected two amines and two aldehydes predicted to yield stable imines with high affinity for CA II and provided a virtual illustration on how effector affinity regulates DCL members.