Bioinspired Supramolecular Nanotoroids with Aggregation-Induced Emission Characteristics
Shuang Fu, Aimin Pang, Xiang Guo, Youling He, Shanliang Song, Jinyin Ge, Jian-Gao Li, Wei Li, Yu Xiong, Lei Wang, Dong Wang, Ben Zhong Tang
Abstract
Supramolecular toroids have attracted continuous attention because of their fascinating topological structure and important role in biological systems. However, it still remains a great challenge to construct supramolecular functional toroids and clarify the formation mechanism. Herein, we develop a strategy to prepare supramolecular helical fluorescent nanotoroids by cooperative self-assembly of an amino acid and a dendritic amphiphile (AIE-den-1) with aggregation-induced emission characteristics. Mechanistic investigation on the basis of fluorescence and circular dichroism analyses suggests that the toroid formation can be driven by the interactions of AIE-den-1 with amino acid and goes through a topological morphology transformation from nanofibers to left-handed nanotoroids by means of a twist-fused-loop process.