화학공학소재연구정보센터
Polymer, Vol.170, 7-15, 2019
Concentration-dependent dye aggregation and disassembly triggered by the same artificial helical foldamer
Constructing and regulating the cyanine dye aggregates have been constantly pursued because of their wide applications in photosensitizers, biological fluorescence probes, nonlinear optics, etc. However, to realize such a process using a single additive still remains a formidable challenge. Here, the aggregation and disassembly of positively charged 3,3-diethyloxadicarbocyanine iodide (DiOC(2)(5)) have been demonstrated just by changing the concentration of an artificial poly(phenylenediethynylene)-based helical foldamer (Poly-1) bearing L-alanine sodium pendants with an amide linker. Poly-1 possessed the negatively charged pendants and hydrophobic helical grooves. Upon simple mixing of equal DiOC(2)(5) and Poly-1, DiOC(2)(5) molecules were mainly enriched on Poly-1 surface driven by electrostatic interaction and arranged along the main chain of Poly-1, resulting in the formation of chiral H-aggregates. But, the excessive Poly-1 would attract some DiOC(2)(5) molecules in H-aggregates via electrostatic interaction. The isolated monomers were easy to orderly disperse into the helical grooves due to hydrophobic interaction. Meanwhile, during the aggregation and disassembly, the solution color changed from peachblow to purple red and then to purple and finally to navy blue.