The structural and sequence control brings areas such as energy transfer, catalysis, chemical signalling into the domain of temporal control, opening up possibilities that photonic materials, organo-catalysts, electronically active materials and drug delivery platforms could be potentially designed with precise structure and temporally executed, thus mimicking the adaptive characteristics of biological world.Creating a general strategy, applicable to a large class of molecules, for controlled aggregation effectively impacts its functional aspects as well.
In addition, this development is expected to have a deeper impact on soft-lithography of organic nanostructures as kinetically controlled processes adding finesse to device fabrication. Control over the temporal profile of material growth allows unprecedented sequence control of supramolecular aggregates leading to fabrication of complex, multicomponent structures such as, the exotic and highly coveted, axial p-n organic hetero-junctions and heterostructures at nanoscale and over the length scale of supramolecular polymers. Recently, we have shown kinetic and thermodynamically controlled approaches for the design of axial organic heterostructures, via the supramolecular block co-polymerization of opto-electronically active organic semiconducting monomers.
