文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Transient Supramolecular Hydrogels Formed by Aging-Induced Seeded Self-Assembly of Molecular Hydrogelators

作者：Wang, Yiming[1];Piskorz, Tomasz K.[2];Lovrak, Matija[2];Mendes, Eduardo[2];Guo, Xuhong[1];Eelkema, Rienk[2];van Esch, Jan H.[2]

机构：[1]East China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Chem Engn, State Key Lab Chem Engn, Meilong Rd 130, Shanghai 200237, Peoples R China;[2]Delft Univ Technol, Dept Chem Engn, van der Maasweg 9, NL-2629 HZ Delft, Netherlands

年份：2020

卷号：7

期号：7

外文期刊名：ADVANCED SCIENCE

收录：;EI(收录号：20200608142941);WOS:【SCI-EXPANDED(收录号:WOS:000511027200001)】；

基金：The authors thank Dr. J. M. Poolman and Dr. C. Maity for providing H, A, A-, and A-FL. The authors would like to acknowledge NSFC Grant (21908061), ECUST Innovation Talent Funds (50621011901008), and China Scholarship Council (CSC) for financial support.

语种：英文

外文关键词：aging; hydrogels; pathway complexity; self-assembly; supramolecular chemistry

摘要：Here, transient supramolecular hydrogels that are formed through simple aging-induced seeded self-assembly of molecular gelators are reported. In the involved molecular self-assembly system, multicomponent gelators are formed from a mixture of precursor molecules and, typically, can spontaneously self-assemble into thermodynamically more stable hydrogels through a multilevel self-sorting process. In the present work, it is surprisingly found that one of the precursor molecules is capable of self-assembling into nano-sized aggregates upon a gentle aging treatment. Importantly, these tiny aggregates can serve as seeds to force the self-assembly of gelators along a kinetically controlled pathway, leading to transient hydrogels that eventually spontaneously convert into thermodynamically more stable hydrogels over time. Such an aging-induced seeded self-assembly process is not only a new route toward synthetic out-of-equilibrium supramolecular systems, but also suggests the necessity of reporting the age of self-assembling building block solutions in other self-assembly systems.