Fibrillar structure of self-assemblies formed from heterocomplementary monomers linked through sextuple hydrogen-bonding arrays
Résumé
The nanostructure of the fibrillar supramolecular aggregates generated in decane solutions of homoditopic heterocomplementary monomers forming sextuple hydrogen-bond-mediated self-assemblies was investigated by small-angle neutron scattering and cryogenic-temperature transmission electron microscopy. The persistence length (Lp) of the fibrillar aggregates was found to be ∼18 nm, as inferred from combined measurements of the radius of gyration and of the contour length. The values of both the weight-average molecular weight and the mass per unit length of the fibers suggest that the latter consist of few aggregated monomolecular wires. At T = 25 °C, the formation of branched aggregates occurs around the crossover concentration, C*, between the dilute and semidilute regimes, whereas the classical behavior of equilibrium polymers is observed at T = 65 °C.