The construction of fullerene (C60 ) hierarchical nanostructures with the help of amphiphilic molecules remains a challenging task in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Utilizing the host-guest complex concept, sub-10 nm layered superstructures are constructed from a monofunctionalized C60 dendron (C60 D, guest) and tweezer-like pyrene dendron (PD, host). Since C60 D and PD are asymmetric shape amphiphiles having liquid crystal (LC) dendrons, both C60 D and PD construct head-to-head bilayer superstructures by themselves. From fluorescence titration experiments, it is realized that the host-guest complex shows 1:1 stoichiometric binding with a binding constant (Ksv = 2.45 × 105 m-1 ). Based on the morphological observations and scattering analyses, it is found that buckle-like asymmetric building blocks (C60 D·PD) are self-assembled by the host-guest complex and construct multilayer hybrid nanostructures. The hierarchical hybrid nanostructures consist of the self-assembled C60 D·PD bilayer with a 2D C60 ·P nanoarray sandwiched between LC dendrons. This advanced strategy is expected to be a practicable and rational guideline for the fabrication of programmed hierarchical hybrid nanostructures.
Keywords: dendron; fullerene; hierarchical nanostructure; host-guest complex; self-assembly.
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