Amphiphiles-metals interactions for applications in modern technologies: recent developments and future perspectives

Abstract

Amphiphiles play a pivotal role in the area of self-assembled structures and interesting additional features can be obtained if metal ions are involved. In this ambit, the development of smart materials benefits from the availability of stimuli-responsive supramolecular amphiphile assemblies where the disassembly back-processes has an inherently basic role providing reversible switching particularly useful in novel approaches and applications. In this tutorial review the basic concepts on self-assembly of traditional and novel amphiphilic molecules with metals are summarized and the more recent concepts of supramolecular assembly are presented. The aim of this contribution is to furnish to the reader a panoramic view of this exciting problematic clarifying what is meant with the concept of complexity and how the rich world of amphiphilic molecules is employed with metals for obtaining complex nanostructure-based systems with novel characteristics for applications in nanotechnology.

Pentacoordinated Liquid Crystalline Zn(II) Complex Organized in Smectic Mesophase: Synthesis, Structural and Electrochemical Properties

“…Coordination complexes based on d-block metal centres are considered as promising molecular materials for bringing important advancements in applicative fields, such as opto-electronics, photonics, data storage, catalysis, biomedicine, etc., due to unique features imparted by the different nature of the molecular fragments, which, when combined together, contribute to the collective properties of the final material [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The redox, magnetic, optical, catalytic, electrical or electrochemical properties of the d-block metal ion centre can cooperatively interact with those of the organic ligands (redox, optic, biologic properties) and/or counterions (solubility in polar solvents, anion coordination) in the case of ionic species, to enhance or modify the overall properties of the architectural ensemble [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Indeed, the properties of a d-block-based metal coordination complex Appl.…”

“…2022, 12, 8306 2 of 14 are more than the sum of the individual component's properties, and in many cases, synergistic unique physicochemical properties may be engineered this way [4,5,20], while the supramolecular arrangement is important due to the sensitivity of the coordination complex to the molecular surroundings, particularly for emission properties [21,22]. Thus, different soft or crystalline supramolecular architectures built up with the same "d-block metal containing building block" through non-covalent interactions can have varied photophysical properties, and small changes in their molecular structure may induce a huge modification of the materials response to external stimuli [5,15,16,21,22].…”