{"id":1661,"date":"2020-03-24T20:31:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T19:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:59:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T11:59:23","slug":"self-assembly-of-small-molecules-at-hydrophobic-interfaces-using-group-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/self-assembly-of-small-molecules-at-hydrophobic-interfaces-using-group-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-assembly of small molecules at hydrophobic interfaces using group effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although\ncommon in nature, the self-assembly of small molecules at sold\u2013liquid\ninterfaces is difficult to control in artificial systems. The high mobility of\ndissolved small molecules limits their residence at the interface, typically\nrestricting the self-assembly to systems under confinement or with mobile\ntethers between the molecules and the surface. Small hydrogen-bonding molecules\ncan overcome these issues by exploiting group-effect stabilization to achieve\nnon-tethered self-assembly at hydrophobic interfaces. Significantly, the weak\nmolecular interactions with the solid makes it possible to influence the\ninterfacial hydrogen bond network, potentially creating a wide variety of supramolecular\nstructures.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the\npaper \u201cSelf-assembly of small molecules at hydrophobic interfaces using\ngroup effect<\/em>\u201d William Foster, Keisuke Miyazawa, Takeshi Fukuma, Halim\nKusumaatmaja and Kislon Vo\u03catchovsky investigate the nanoscale details of water\nand alcohols mixtures self-assembling at the interface with graphite through\ngroup-effect. They explore the interplay between inter-molecular and surface\ninteractions by adding small amounts of foreign molecules able to interfere\nwith the hydrogen bond network and systematically varying the length of the\nalcohol hydrocarbon chain. The resulting supramolecular structures forming at\nroom temperature are then examined using atomic force microscopy with insights\nfrom computer simulations.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors show that the group-based self-assembly approach investigated in the paper is general and can be reproduced on other substrates such as molybdenum disulphide and graphene oxide, potentially making it relevant for a wide variety of systems.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NanoWorld Arrow UHF-AuD<\/a> ultra high frequency cantilevers for High Speed AFM were used for the amplitude modulation atomic force microscopy described in this paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

Figure 4 from \u201cSelf-assembly of small molecules at hydrophobic interfaces using group effect\u201c by William Foster et al.:
Impact of the backbone length of primary alcohols on interfacial self-assembly on HOPG. The basic monolayer motif is visible as expected in a 50\u2006:\u200650 methanol\u2006:\u2006water mixture (a), here imaged by amplitude-modulation AFM (topography image). In a 50\u2006:\u200650 ethanol\u2006:\u2006water mixture (b), two organised layers are visible both in topography and in the phase where it is more pronounced, outlined by a white dashed line (blue and red arrows). In phase, the self-assembled layers appear darker than the directly exposed graphite, where no structures are present (black arrow). The lower layer shows few resolvable features and is bordered by wide rows that have a separation of 5.89 \u00b1 0.28 nm. In 50\u2006:\u200650 1-propanol\u2006:\u2006water mixture (c), novel structures with long, straight edges emerge (red arrow) and grow on top of the exposed graphite (black arrow). The structures have a row periodicity of 5.86 \u00b1 0.25 nm. The inset shows details of the longitudinal row structures near an edge. Further variance is seen in a 50\u2006:\u200650 2-propanol\u2006:\u2006water mixture (d) where two types of domains form (red and blue arrows), both demonstrating a clear phase contrast with the graphite surface (black arrow). The domains have longitudinal rows with periodicities of 6.10 \u00b1 0.35 nm (blue arrow) and 4.91 \u00b1 0.45 nm (red arrow). Unlike for (c), higher resolution of the row (inset) evidence curved edges. The scale bars are 50 nm in (a) and (b), 100 nm in (c) and (d) main image and 20 nm in the insets. The purple colour scale bar represents a height variation of 1 nm in (a), (b) and (d), 3 nm in (c) and 0.5 nm in the insets. The blue scale bar represents a phase variation of 1.5\u00b0 in (b), 2\u00b0 in (c) and its inset and 15\u00b0 in (d) and its inset. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*William Foster, Keisuke Miyazawa, Takeshi Fukuma, Halim Kusumaatmaja and Kislon Vo\u03catchovsky
Self-assembly of small molecules at<\/strong> <\/strong><\/a>hydrophobic interfaces using group effect
<\/strong>Nanoscale, 2020,12, 5452
DOI: 10.1039\/c9nr09505e

Please follow this external link to read the full article: https:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlepdf\/2020\/nr\/c9nr09505e <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open Access: The paper \u00ab Self-assembly of small molecules at hydrophobic interfaces using group effect\u00bb  by William Foster, Keisuke Miyazawa, Takeshi Fukuma, Halim Kusumaatmaja and Kislon Vo\u03catchovsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article\u2019s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article\u2019s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although common in nature, the self-assembly of small molecules at sold\u2013liquid interfaces is difficult to control in artificial systems. The high mobility of dissolved small molecules limits their residence at the interface, typically restricting the self-assembly to systems under confinement or with mobile tethers between the molecules and the surface. Small hydrogen-bonding molecules can overcome … Continue reading Self-assembly of small molecules at hydrophobic interfaces using group effect<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[62,66,65,228,329,84,130,17,220,50,25,258,222,69,16,281,241,229,330,26,392,393,394,395,396],"class_list":{"0":"post-1661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-news","7":"tag-afm-probes","8":"tag-afm","11":"tag-amplitude-modulation-atomic-force-microscopy","12":"tag-arrow-uhf-aud","13":"tag-arrow-uhfaud","14":"tag-atomic-force-microscopy","15":"tag-high-frequency-afm-probes","16":"tag-high-speed-afm","17":"tag-high-speed-scanning","18":"tag-molecular-dynamics-md-simulations","19":"tag-molecular-self-assembly","20":"tag-nanotechnology","21":"tag-scanning-probe-microscopy","22":"tag-selfassembly","23":"tag-spm","25":"tag-supramolecular-assembly","26":"tag-ultrafast-scanning","30":"tag-395","31":"tag-396"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nanoworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}