Heat-Induced Morphological Transformation of Supramolecular Nanostructures by Retro-Diels-Alder Reaction

Controlling the morphology of supramolecular nanostructures in response to external stimuli is an important challenge in the development of functional soft materials. Here we show that a morphological transformation from 2D nanosheets to a network of 1D nanofibers is triggered by heating, which induces molecular conversion of a bolaamphiphile to a hydrogelator by means of a retro-DielsAlder reaction, thereby producing a new heat-set supramolecular hydrogel. We anticipate that our design will be a starting point for more sophisticated supramolecular systems that integrate the thermodynamics of molecular assembly and the kinetics of chemical reactions to create complex supramolecular nanostructures.