Circularly polarized light modulated supramolecular self-assembly for an azobenzene-based chiral gel

Kenan Shao; Ziyu Lv; Yuting Xiong; Guodong Li; Dongdong Wang; Haining Zhang; Guangyan Qing

doi:10.1039/c9ra01974j

Circularly polarized light modulated supramolecular self-assembly for an azobenzene-based chiral gel

RSC Adv. 2019 Apr 2;9(18):10360-10363. doi: 10.1039/c9ra01974j. eCollection 2019 Mar 28.

Authors

Kenan Shao^{1

2}, Ziyu Lv³, Yuting Xiong², Guodong Li^{1

2}, Dongdong Wang², Haining Zhang¹, Guangyan Qing²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology 122 Luoshi Road Wuhan 430070 P. R. China.
² Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences 457 Zhongshan Road Dalian 116023 P. R. China qinggy@dicp.ac.cn.
³ College of Electronic Science and Technology, Shenzhen University Shenzhen 518060 P. R. China.

Abstract

UV light-triggered trans-to-cis isomerization of azobenzene usually results in the collapse of a self-assembly system owing to the breaking of molecular planarity. Interestingly, two totally opposite self-assembly trends have been detected when a C _2v-symmetric chiral gelator was irradiated by a circularly polarized light (CPL) with specific handedness, indicating that CPL could become a powerful tool in modulating the assembly behaviour of the photo-responsive system.