Self-assembly behavior of disaccharide-containing supra-amphiphiles

In this paper, supra-amphiphilic compounds containing disaccharides and azobenzene ends have been constructed via dynamic covalent bond. It was found that the slight structural difference of the disaccharides made significant difference in the self-assembled morphologies. Namely, three kinds of azodisaccharide supra-amphiphiles were found to assemble into different morphologies, with the only difference in chemical structure from the disaccharides. More importantly, the structural difference between the disaccharides, including lactoside, maltoside and cellobioside was trivial. Molecular simulation revealed the packing of molecules was due to the different contribution from hydrogen bonds. The above results clearly indicated the contribution of saccharide packing, especially the related hydrogen bonding,to the final morphology of the assembled structures.