Self-assembled, optically-active {naphthalene diimide}U{cucurbit[8]uril} ensembles in an aqueous environment

Heather F Higginbotham; Subashani Maniam; Tina Hsia; Lyle Isaacs; Steven J Langford; Toby D M Bell

doi:10.1039/d1cp00659b

Self-assembled, optically-active {naphthalene diimide}U{cucurbit[8]uril} ensembles in an aqueous environment

Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2021 Jun 23;23(24):13434-13439. doi: 10.1039/d1cp00659b.

Authors

Heather F Higginbotham¹, Subashani Maniam², Tina Hsia¹, Lyle Isaacs³, Steven J Langford⁴, Toby D M Bell¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia. toby.bell@monash.edu.
² Applied Chemistry and Environmental Science, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria 3122, Australia. sjlangford@swin.edu.au.

PMID: 34105550
DOI: 10.1039/d1cp00659b

Abstract

Naphthalene diimides (NDIs) are shown to arrange spontaneously co-facially with cucurbit[8]uril (CB[8]) in an aqueous environment through purely non-covalent interactions. The resultant 2 : 2 supramolecular complex of NDI and CB[8] is highly fluorescent (>30 times more than the constituent NDIs) due to the formation of NDI-NDI excimers within the supramolecular complex.