Organic Nanoflowers from a Wide Variety of Molecules Templated by a Hierarchical Supramolecular Scaffold.

Nanoflowers (NFs) are flowered-shaped particles with overall sizes or features in the nanoscale. Beyond their pleasing aesthetics, NFs have found a number of applications ranging from catalysis, to sensing, to drug delivery. Compared to inorganic based NFs, their organic and hybrid counterparts are relatively underdeveloped mostly because of the lack of a reliable and versatile method for their construction.

Patchy supramolecules as versatile tools to probe hydrophobicity in nanoglobular systems.

We describe precise supramolecules that enable the evaluation of the effective hydrophobicity of amphiphilic or "patchy" nanoglobular systems. These supramolecules exhibit the lower critical solution temperature phenomenon, which provides a quantitative measure of their effective hydrophobicity. Specifically, two isomeric 8-aryl-2'-deoxyguanosine derivatives with a transposed pair of methylene groups self-assemble into hexadecameric nanoglobular supramolecular G-quadruplexes (SGQs) that show large differences in their transition temperatures as determined by turbidity and differential scanning calorimetry studies.