Energy Landscape in Supramolecular Co-Assembly of Platinum(II) Complexes and Block Copolymers

Abstract

Establishment of energy landscape has emerged as an efficient pathway for improved understanding and manipulation of both thermodynamic and kinetic behaviors of complicated supramolecular systems. Energy landscapes of supramolecular co-assembly of platinum(II) complexes and block copolymers have been established. Co-assembly at room temperature has been found to only allow the longitudinal growth of platinum(II) complexes and block copolymers into core-shell nanofibers that are the kinetically trapped products. Thermal annealing can switch on the transverse growth of platinum(II) complexes and block copolymers to produce core-shell nanobelts that are the thermodynamically stable nanostructures. Besides, rapid quenching of a hot co-assembly mixture to room temperature can capture intermediate nanobelt-block-nanofiber nanostructures that are metastable and capable of converting to nanobelts upon further incubation at room temperature. Moreover, sonication treatment has been found to couple with the energy landscape of the co-assembly system and open a unique energy-driven pathway to activate the kinetically forbidden nanofiber-to-nanobelt morphological transformation at room temperature. References: 1. Zhang, K.; Yeung, M. C. L.; Leung, S. Y. L.; Yam, V. W. W. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, 140, 9594. †Areas of Excellence Scheme (AoE), University Grants Committee (Hong Kong)