Self-Assembly of Cyclic Dipeptides: Platforms for Functional Materials

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 688-697
Author(s):  
Yu Chen ◽  
Kai Tao ◽  
Wei Ji ◽  
Pandeeswar Makam ◽  
Sigal Rencus-Lazar ◽  
...  

Supramolecular self-assembled functional materials comprised of cyclic dipeptide building blocks have excellent prospects for biotechnology applications due to their exceptional structural rigidity, morphological flexibility, ease of preparation and modification. Although the pharmacological uses of many natural cyclic dipeptides have been studied in detail, relatively little is reported on the engineering of these supramolecular architectures for the fabrication of functional materials. In this review, we discuss the progress in the design, synthesis, and characterization of cyclic dipeptide supramolecular nanomaterials over the past few decades, highlighting applications in biotechnology and optoelectronics engineering.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fangrui Zheng ◽  
Tsz Hin Yui ◽  
Jiji Zhang ◽  
Zuowei Xie

AbstractCarboranes are a class of carbon-boron molecular clusters with three-dimensional aromaticity, and inherent robustness. These endowments enable carboranes as valuable building blocks for applications ranging from functional materials to pharmaceuticals. Thus, the chemistry of carboranes has received tremendous research interest, and significant progress has been made in the past decades. However, many attempts to the synthesis of carboranes with more than 14 vertices had been unsuccessful since the report of a 14-vertex carborane in 2005. The question arises as to whether these long sought-after molecules exist. We describe in this article the synthesis and structural characterization of 15- and 16-vertex closo-carboranes as well as 16-vertex ruthenacarborane. Such a success relies on the introduction of silyl groups to both cage carbons, stabilizing the corresponding nido-carborane dianions and promoting the capitation reaction with HBBr2·SMe2. This work would shed some light on the preparation of carboranes with 17 vertices or more, and open the door for studying supercarborane chemistry.


Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huang Tang ◽  
Zhewei Gu ◽  
Haifeng Ding ◽  
Zhibo Li ◽  
Shiyan Xiao ◽  
...  

A fundamental challenge in chemistry and materials science is to create new carbon nanomaterials by assembling structurally unique carbon building blocks, such as nonplanar π-conjugated cyclic molecules. However, self-assembly of such cyclic π-molecules to form organized nanostructures has been rarely explored despite intensive studies on their chemical synthesis. Here we synthesized a family of new cycloparaphenylenes and found that these fully hydrophobic and nonplanar cyclic π-molecules could self-assemble into structurally distinct two-dimensional crystalline multilayer nanosheets. Moreover, these crystalline multilayer nanosheets could overcome inherent rigidity to curve into closed crystalline vesicles in solution. These supramolecular assemblies show that the cyclic molecular scaffolds are homogeneously arranged on the surface of nanosheets and vesicles with their molecular isotropic x-y plane standing obliquely on the surface. These supramolecular architectures that combined exact crystalline order, orientation-specific arrangement of π-conjugated cycles, controllable morphology, uniform molecular pore, superior florescence quench ability, and photoluminescence are expected to give rise to a new class of functional materials displaying unique photonic, electronic, and biological functions.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (11) ◽  
pp. 3376
Author(s):  
Marco Scarel ◽  
Silvia Marchesan

Cyclodipeptides (CDPs) or 2,5-diketopiperazines (DKPs) can exert a variety of biological activities and display pronounced resistance against enzymatic hydrolysis as well as a propensity towards self-assembly into gels, relative to the linear-dipeptide counterparts. They have attracted great interest in a variety of fields spanning from functional materials to drug discovery. This concise review will analyze the latest advancements in their synthesis, self-assembly into gels, and their more innovative applications.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Jin ◽  
Nerea Bilbao ◽  
Yang Lv ◽  
Xiao-Ye Wang ◽  
Soltani Paniz ◽  
...  

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), quasi-one-dimensional strips of graphene, exhibit a nonzero bandgap due to quantum confinement and edge effects. In the past decade, different types of GNRs with atomically precise structures...


2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Liu ◽  
Zhan-Ting Li

The chemistry of imine bond formation from simple aldehyde and amine precursors is among the most powerful dynamic covalent chemistries employed for the construction of discrete molecular objects and extended molecular frameworks. The reversible nature of the C=N bond confers error-checking and proof-reading capabilities in the self-assembly process within a multi-component reaction system. This review highlights recent progress in the self-assembly of complex organic molecular architectures that are enabled by dynamic imine chemistry, including molecular containers with defined geometry and size, mechanically interlocked molecules, and extended frameworks and polymers, from building blocks with preprogrammed steric and electronic information. The functional aspects associated with the nanometer-scale features not only place these dynamically constructed nanostructures at the frontier of materials sciences, but also bring unprecedented opportunities for the discovery of new functional materials.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1223-C1223
Author(s):  
Jason Benedict ◽  
Ian Walton ◽  
Dan Patel ◽  
Jordan Cox

Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) remain an extremely active area of research given the wide variety of potential applications and the enormous diversity of structures that can be created from their constituent building blocks. While MOFs are typically employed as passive materials, next-generation materials will exhibit structural and/or electronic changes in response to applied external stimuli including light, charge, and pH. Herein we present recent results in which advanced photochromic diarylethenes are combined with MOFs through covalent and non-covalent methods to create photo-responsive permanently porous crystalline materials. This presentation will describe the design, synthesis, and characterization of next-generation photo-switchable diarylethene based ligands which are subsequently used to photo-responsive MOFs. These UBMOF crystals are, by design, isostructural with previously reported non-photoresponsive frameworks which enables a systematic comparison of their physical and chemical properties. While the photoswitching of the isolated ligand in solution is fully reversible, the cycloreversion reaction is suppressed in the UBMOF single crystalline phase. Spectroscopic evidence for thermally induced cycloreversion will be presented, as well as a detailed analysis addressing the limits of X-ray diffraction techniques applied to these systems.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuaiyuan Han ◽  
Sandrine Pensec ◽  
Cédric Lorthioir ◽  
Jacques Jestin ◽  
Jean-Michel Guigner ◽  
...  

Janus cylinders are one-dimensional colloids that have two faces with different compositions and functionalities and are useful as building blocks for advanced functional materials. Such anisotropic objects are difficult to prepare with nanometric dimensions. Here we describe a robust and versatile strategy to form micrometer long Janus nanorods with diameters in the 10-nanometer range, by self-assembly in water of end-functionalized polymers. For the first time, the Janus topology is not a result of the phase segregation of incompatible polymer arms, but is driven by the interactions between unsymmetrical and complementary hydrogen bonded stickers. It is therefore independent of the actual polymers used and works even for compatible polymers. To illustrate their applicative potential, we show that these Janus nanorods can efficiently stabilize oil-in-water emulsions.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (09) ◽  
pp. 804-814 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Carlucci ◽  
Gianfranco Ciani ◽  
Simona Maggini ◽  
Davide M. Proserpio ◽  
Fabio Ragaini ◽  
...  

We report herein the synthesis of the porphyrins 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-carboxybiphenyl)-porphyrin (H2TCBP) and 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-carboxy-2,6-dimethylbiphenyl)porphyrin (H2TCDMBP) bearing diphenyl units on meso-positions, and of their cobalt and silver derivatives. The silver complexes of H2TCDMBP and of H2TCPP ( H2TCPP = 5 ,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin) were investigated by X-ray crystallography and their supramolecular organization elucidated. Co(TCBP) was reacted with copper formate, yielding a polymeric compound that showed a catalytic activity in the benzylic amination of hydrocarbons using arylazide as aminating agent.


Author(s):  
Chenfei Yao ◽  
Ge Shi ◽  
Yijie Hu ◽  
Hao Zhuo ◽  
Zehong Chen ◽  
...  

The development of emulsion templated functional materials has achieved great progress in the past decades in academic and industrial fields. Recently, new building blocks such as graphene, transition metal carbides...


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minwoo Yang ◽  
Woon Ju Song

AbstractProteins are versatile natural building blocks with highly complex and multifunctional architectures, and self-assembled protein structures have been created by the introduction of covalent, noncovalent, or metal-coordination bonding. Here, we report the robust, selective, and reversible metal coordination properties of unnatural chelating amino acids as the sufficient and dominant driving force for diverse protein self-assembly. Bipyridine-alanine is genetically incorporated into a D3 homohexamer. Depending on the position of the unnatural amino acid, 1-directional, crystalline and noncrystalline 2-directional, combinatory, and hierarchical architectures are effectively created upon the addition of metal ions. The length and shape of the structures is tunable by altering conditions related to thermodynamics and kinetics of metal-coordination and subsequent reactions. The crystalline 1-directional and 2-directional biomaterials retain their native enzymatic activities with increased thermal stability, suggesting that introducing chelating ligands provides a specific chemical basis to synthesize diverse protein-based functional materials while retaining their native structures and functions.


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