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The Special “Morse Code” between Solvent Polarity and Morphology Flexibility in a POSS–Dendrimer Supramolecular System
Author(s) -
Shan Tianyu,
Gao Liang,
Tong Xiaoqian,
Du Qinqing,
An Zhihang,
He Huiwen,
Lin Jiaping,
Chen Si,
Wang Xu
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201901422
Subject(s) - polarity (international relations) , flexibility (engineering) , morphology (biology) , solvent , supramolecular chemistry , polar , materials science , dendrimer , molecular dynamics , silsesquioxane , morphing , solvent polarity , chemical physics , crystallography , polymer chemistry , crystal structure , chemistry , composite material , organic chemistry , physics , computational chemistry , computer science , polymer , mathematics , cell , genetics , biology , biochemistry , computer vision , statistics , astronomy
An amazing phenomenon of the relative magnitude of modulus of two liquid‐crystal (LC) gels is found inverted under/above their phase transition temperature T LC‐iso , which is further proved to be caused by their diverse morphology flexibility. By testing the polarity of two LCs, gelator POSS‐G1‐Boc (POSS=polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) was discovered to self‐assemble into more flexible structures in a relatively low polar LC, whereas more rigid ones are formed in higher polar LC. Hence, a fitting function to connect morphology flexibility with solvent polarity was established, which can even be generalized to a number of common solvents. Experimental observations and coarse‐grained molecular dynamics simulations revealed that solvent polarity mirrors a “Morse code”, with each “code” corresponding to a specific morphology flexibility.