Morphology transformation between nanofibres and vesicles controlled by ultrasound and heat in tryptamine-based assembly

Abstract

<p>A novel low-molecular-mass organic gelator <b>T1</b> containing tryptamine and sugar segments was designed and synthesised which can gelate alcohols accelerated by heat and sonication. Interestingly, morphology exchange between vesicles as precipitate and a three-dimensional gel network tuned by heating and ultrasound was observed. The mechanism was studied by IR, FL, X-ray diffraction. It was presented that the effect of ultrasound was to disturb the spontaneous self-assembly of <b>T1</b> molecule, and promote the long arrangement and disordered assembly of <b>T1</b> molecules into fibrous networks, thus resulting in the gelation in methanol.</p