Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.3390/molecules28176228

Publication Title

Molecules

Volume

28

Issue

17

Pages

6228 (1-15)

Abstract

Carbohydrate-based low-molecular-weight gelators are interesting new materials with many potential applications. These compounds can be designed to include multiple stimuli-responsive functional groups. In this study, we designed and synthesized several chemically responsive bola-glycolipids and dimeric carbohydrate- and diarylethene-based photoswitchable derivatives. The dimeric glycolipids formed stable gels in a variety of solvent systems. The best performing gelators in this series contained decanedioic and dithienylethene (DTE) spacers, which formed gels in eight and nine of the tested solvents, respectively. The two new DTE-containing esters possessed interesting photoswitching properties and DTE derivative 7 was found to have versatile gelation properties in many solvents, including DMSO solutions at low concentrations. The gels formed by these compounds were stable under acidic conditions and tended to hydrolyze under basic conditions. Several gels were used to absorb rhodamine B and Toluidine blue from aqueous solutions. In this study, we demonstrated the rational design of molecular gelators which incorporated photoresponsive and pH responsive functions, leading to the discovery of multiple effective stimuli-responsive gelators.

Rights

© 2023 by the Authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: Not applicable.

Original Publication Citation

Aryal, P., Morris, J., Adhikari, S. B., Bietsch, J., & Wang, G. (2023). Synthesis and self-assembling properties of carbohydrate- and diarylethene-based photoswitchable molecular gelators. Molecules, 28(17), 1-15, Article 6228. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28176228

ORCID

0009-0007-8137-1370 (Aryal), 0000-0001-7473-0004 (Wang)

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