Chemically Fueled Three-State Chiroptical Switching Supramolecular Gel with Temporal Control

The recent discovery of temporally controlled gels opens broad perspectives to the field of smart functional materials. However, to obtain fully operative systems, the design of simple and robust gels displaying complex functions is desirable. Herein, we fuel dissipative gelating materials through iterative additions of trichloroacetic acid (TCA). This simple fuel enables to switch over time an acid/base-dependent commercially available amino acid gelator/DBU combination between three distinct states (anionic, cationic, and neutral), while liberating volatile CO2 and CHCl3 upon fuel consumption. Of interest, the anionic resting state of the system is obtained through trapping of 1 equiv of CO2 through the formation of a carbamate. The system is tunable, robust, and resilient over time with over 25 consecutive sol-gel-sol cycles possible without significant loss of properties. Most importantly, because of the chiral nature of the amino acid gelator, the system features chiroptical switching properties moving reversibly between three distinct states as observed by ECD. The described system considerably enhances the potential of smart molecular devices for logic gates or data storage by adding a time dimension based on three states to the gelating materials. It is particularly simple in terms of chemical components involved, but it enables sophisticated functions.

Automated summary

The study introduces a fueling method using trichloroacetic acid to create dissipative gelating materials that can switch between different acid/base states. The system is robust and resilient, with the chiral nature of amino acid gelator contributing to chiroptical switching properties.