Bioinspired Supramolecular Materials

In biological systems, noncovalent interactions of molecular building blocks such as lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids play important roles in creating diverse complex structure and dynamic function. Inspired by such biological systems, we have designed a variety of functional supramolecular materials on the basis of self-assembly of covalently prefabricated small molecules. Among them, the following three topics are described in this account: (1) supramolecular self-assembled materials based on pi-conjugated disk-shaped molecules, (2) supramolecular materials based on helical-shaped molecules, and (3) biofunctions of supramolecular materials based on amphiphilic molecules.