Light-activated photodeformable supramolecular dissipative self-assemblies

Abstract

Dissipative self-assembly, one of fundamentally important out-of-equilibrium self-assembly systems, can serve as a controllable platform to exhibit temporal processes for various non-stimulus responsive properties. However, construction of light-fueled dissipative self-assembly structures with transformable morphology to modulate non-photoresponsive properties remains a great challenge. Here, we report a light-activated photodeformable dissipative self-assembly system in aqueous solution as metastable fluorescent palette. Zwitterionic sulfonato-merocyanine is employed as a light-induced amphiphile to co-assemble with polyethyleneimine after light irradiation. The formed spherical nanoparticles spontaneously transform into cuboid ones in the dark with simultaneous variation of the particle sizes. Then the two kinds of nanoparticles can reversibly interconvert to each other by periodical light irradiation and thermal relaxation. Furthermore, after loading different fluorophores exhibiting red, green, blue emissions and their mixtures, all these fluorescent dissipative deformable nanoparticles display time-dependent fluorescence variation with wide range of colors. Owing to the excellent performance of photodeformable dissipative assembly platform, the light-controlled fluorescence has achieved a 358-fold enhancement. Therefore, exposing the nanoparticles loaded with fluorophores to light in a spatially controlled manner allows us to draw multicolored fluorescent images that spontaneously disappeared after a specific period of time.

Visualization of Antimicrobial-Induced Bacterial Membrane Disruption with a Bicolor AIEgen

“…IQ-Cm was demonstrated to rapidly assess the antimicrobial activity of the three chosen representative membrane-active quaternary ammonium antimicrobials (Scheme To monitor the bacterial membrane disruption of antimicrobials, some electrical devices [14,15], liquid crystals sensors [16] and fluorescence methods [17,18] have been explored. Fluorescence methods have attracted more attention not only due to the simple and fast feature, but also the direct visualization of the interaction between antimicrobials and bacteria [4,17,19,20]. Various fluorescent dyes, such as propidium iodide (PI), Rhodamine 123 and carbocyanine derivatives, have been developed to assess the viability and CM integrity of Gram-negative bacteria [18].…”

Steroid-Aromatics Clathrates as Chiroptical Materials with Circularly Polarized Luminescence and Phosphorescence

“…The host–guest complexation − between PyBr and Pg arouses dramatic luminescent color changes with the evolution from fluorescence to phosphorescence. The host–guest complexation between Pg and PyBr is fast and readily realized without elaborated processing, which allows for the selective display on the different substrates (Figure ).…”

Advances in Biodegradable Soft Robots

“…Nevertheless, most of them are sensitive to temperatures, solvents, or water, such that they pose other challenges to selecting suitable fabrication strategies [ 169 ]. More recently, smart, hybrid, biodegradable materials have shown another possibility to developing multi-functional, intelligent, soft robots in the near future [ 170 , 171 ]. In addition, to overcome the limitations of biodegradable soft robots, precise and selective magnetic, electric, thermal, or pH control systems have accompanied the developments of biodegradable material syntheses and high-throughput fabrication methodologies.…”