Frame-guided assembly from a theoretical perspective

Abstract

The molecular self-assembly of various structures such as micelles and vesicles has been the subject of comprehensive studies. Recently, a new approach to design these structures, the frame-guided assembly, has been developed to progress towards fabrics of predefined shape and size, following an initially provided frame of guiding elements. Here we study frame-guided assembly into a two-dimensional membrane via computer simulations, based on a single-bead coarse grained surfactant model in continuous space. In agreement with the experiment the assembly process already starts for surfactant concentrations below the critical micelle concentration. Furthermore, upon increasing temperature the formation process gets more delocalized. Additionally, the assembly process of the resulting membrane plane is modelled by a lattice gas model. It displays a similar phenomenology but additionally allows the derivation of analytical mean-field predictions. In this way a fundamental understanding of frame-guided assembly can be gained.

Photo-Responsive Control of Adsorption and Structure Formation at the Air–Water Interface with Arylazopyrazoles

“…To achieve larger time and length scales, the complexity of coarse-graining models has been extremely reduced, e.g., by using just three beads per molecule or a single bead together with a vector to capture the orientation . This ultra-coarse-grained model has been successfully used to describe the spatiotemporal properties of vesicle formation and to elucidate the physical mechanisms behind frame-guided assembly . In the present work, we use this model to track surfactant adsorption in dependence of two relevant energies, namely, the interaction of adjacent molecules and the adsorption energy at the air–water interface.…”

Preparing liposomes through frame guided assembly with high-loading functional nucleic acids

“…23 Recently, a universal frame guided assembly (FGA) strategy has been proposed to prepare customized vesicles. 12,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] During the FGA process, amphiphilic frames are prepared by anchoring a leading hydrophobic group (LHG) onto predesigned scaffolds, which could guide the assembly of other amphiphiles (e.g., polymers and surfactants). Recently, taking advantage of the transmembrane peptide as a leading hydrophobic group, the lipid molecules have been successfully guided to form liposomes, which exhibited good stability for small molecular drug delivery.…”

“…Recently, a universal frame guided assembly (FGA) strategy has been proposed to prepare customized vesicles. 12,24–34 During the FGA process, amphiphilic frames are prepared by anchoring a leading hydrophobic group (LHG) onto pre-designed scaffolds, which could guide the assembly of other amphiphiles ( e.g. , polymers and surfactants).…”