Designing well-defined, smart and dynamic nanostructures in solution through hierarchical assembly of materials has always been an exciting goal for many researchers. These nanoscale objects are very important in different aspects of nanotechnology since they are the key elements for making future advanced materials. Among various fabrication methods, ionic self-assembly has appeared as an important method in designing smart and stimuli responsive nanostructures. Although ionic interactions are important due to their abundance in nature, but incorporating them to design controlled artificial nanostructure has always been challenging. We proposed that through incorporation of zwitterionic functionalities it is possible to control the charged density of ionic building blocks and direct them into desired nanostructures. We showed that with controlling the electrostatic interaction of zwitterionic dendrimers and ionic surfactants by solution pH, we can design smart nanotubes through membrane fusion of bilayer vesicles which found to be responsive to ionic strength. Combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission and scanning electron microscopy (TEM, SEM) techniques were used to visualize nanotubes while dynamic light scattering (DLS) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) provided information regarding self-assembly process in solution. Zwitterionic materials are important due to their unique behavior compare to typical polyelectrolytes which makes them a potential candidate in designing future novel nanostructures.

Bottom-up hierarchical self-assembly of zwitterionic dendrimers into stimuli responsive dynamic nanotubes

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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