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Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Controlling the Size, Shape and Stability of Supramolecular Polymers in Water
Published on: August 2, 2012
Supramolecular reactor from self-assembly of rod-coil molecule in aqueous environment
Myongsoo Lee1, Cheong-Jin Jang, Ja-Hyoung Ryu
1Center for Supramolecular Nano-Assembly and Department of Chemistry, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea. mslee@yonsei.ac.kr
Abstract:
We synthesized an amphiphilic coil-rod-coil triblock molecule consisting of hexa-p-phenylene as a rod block and poly(ethylene oxide) with the number of repeating units of 17 as coil blocks and investigated aggregation behavior in aqueous environment. The rod-coil molecule was observed to aggregate into discrete micelles consisting of hydrophobic disklike rod bundles encapsulated by hydrophilic poly(ethylene oxide) coils. The aromatic bundles of the micelles were demonstrated to be used as an efficient supramolecular reactor for the room temperature Suzuki cross-coupling reaction of a wide range of aryl halides, including even aryl chlorides with phenylboronic acids in aqueous environment. These results demonstrate that self-assembly of amphiphilic rod-coil molecules can provide a useful strategy to construct an efficient supramolecular reactor for aromatic coupling reaction.
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