Bicomonent co-assembled molecular gels : design, synthesis and application in biocatalysis

Abstract

Self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules holds promise in various applications in the fields of biomedical engineering and nanotechnology. Low molecular weight based amphiphiles, bolaamphiphiles or discotic amphiphiles provide supramolecular architectures. The supramolecular architectures include vesicles, toroids, tubes and other nanostructures. Meanwhile, direct or indirect involvement of a second component induces the co-assembly process of the amphiphiles. To find out an easy approach to control the nanostructures, researchers are inspired to expand multicomponent self-assembled systems. The bicomponent system is the simplest multicomponent systems to achieve controlled co-assembly and gelation. Over the last decade, several bicomponent co-assembled systems were developed and studied thoroughly. Still, there is a wide interest to develop nanoarchitectured bicomponent systems which could be used for various applications.The main objectives of the present study are:  To synthesize Amoc (9-anthracenemethyloxycarbonyl) capped amino acid-based amphiphilic molecules and to study the influence of graphene quantum dots in the co-assembled systems.  To control chiral nanostructures of synthesized leucine-based bolaamphiphiles in the co-assembled hydrogel.  To develop bicomponent co-assembled supramolecular organic frameworks (SOFs) with a controlled pore size in gel state using discotic trifunctional amphiphile for the use of lipase-catalyzed inclusion of gastrodigenin.  To evolve small amphiphilic based bicomponent co-assembled hydrogel to produce L-DOPA in the gel medium using tyrosinase.