Ionic self-assembled organic nanobelts from the hexagonal phase complexes and their cyclodextrin inclusions

The supramolecular ionic self-assembly (ISA) strategy has been used to construct the long-range ordered hierarchical aggregates from the complexes of 1-adamantanamine hydrochloride (AdCl) and sodium bis(2-ethyl-1-hexyl)sulfosuccinate (AOT). The formed AOT-Ad complexes have been proved to possess a composition of equal molar ratio and a hexagonal columnar structure with Ad blocks as the core and AOT outside. More interestingly, the length, width, and thickness of the aggregates are on the order of milli-, micro-, and nanometer, respectively, and can thus be taken as one type of organic nanobelt. Such nanobelts are plastic and stable to resist breakage even bent to a circle, which makes them useful in the fields of novel nanomaterial fabrication. In addition, the ISA process of this aggregate can be tuned by including Ad blocks in beta-cyclodextrins to form a supramolecular complex, which is comparatively stable in the water and expected to self-assemble into some other ordered structures.