Self-Assembling Interfaces

Self-assembling interfaces fashioned from fluorinated molecules... 

Pengelly, K. Loncar, A. Perieteanu, A. A. Dawson, J. F. Cysteine engineering of actin self-assembly interfaces. Biochem. Cell Biol. 2009,87, 663-675. 

The power of optical spectroscopies is that they are often much better developed than their electron-, ion- and atom-based counterparts, and therefore provide results that are easier to interpret. Furtlienuore, photon-based teclmiques are uniquely poised to help in the characterization of liquid-liquid, liquid-solid and even solid-solid interfaces generally inaccessible by other means. There has certainly been a renewed interest in the use of optical spectroscopies for the study of more realistic systems such as catalysts, adsorbates, emulsions, surfactants, self-assembled layers, etc. 

Mortensen K 1998 Structural properties of self-assembled polymeric micelles Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sol. 3 12-19... 

Manne S 1997 Visualizing self-assembly Force microscopy of ionic surfactant aggregates at solid-liquid interfaces Prog. Colloid Polym. Sol. 103 226-33... 

Deiamarche E, Michei B, Biebuyck FI A and Gerber C 1996 Golden interfaces the surface of self-assembled monolayers Adv. Mater. 8 719-29... 

Riste T and Sherrington D (eds) 1996 Physics of Biomaterials Fluctuations, Self-assembly and vo/uf/o/ (Dordrecht Kluwer) An excellent modern account of the exciting interface between biology, physics and chemistry. 

The size-exclusion and ion-exchange properties of zeoHtes have been exploited to cause electroactive species to align at a zeoHte—water interface (233—235). The zeoHte thus acts as a template for the self-organization of electron transfer (ET) chains that may find function as biomimetic photosynthetic systems, current rectifiers, and photodiodes. An example is the three subunit ET chain comprising Fe(CN)g anion (which is charge-excluded from the anionic zeoHte pore stmcture), Os(bipyridine)3 (which is an interfacial cation due to size exclusion of the bipyridine ligand), and an intrazeoHte cation (trimethylamino)methylferrocene (F J ). A cationic polymer bound to the (CN) anion holds the self-assembled stmcture at an... 

The advantage of the LB technique is that it allows systematic studies of 2-D organization, both before and after transfer from the air—water interface onto a soHd substrate. However, the coupling of 3-D self-organization of macromolecules in solution with organization at a soHd surface may best be achieved using the self-assembly technique. 

Random interface models for ternary systems share the feature with the Widom model and the one-order-parameter Ginzburg-Landau theory (19) that the density of amphiphiles is not allowed to fluctuate independently, but is entirely determined by the distribution of oil and water. However, in contrast to the Ginzburg-Landau approach, they concentrate on the amphiphilic sheets. Self-assembly of amphiphiles into monolayers of given optimal density is premised, and the free energy of the system is reduced to effective free energies of its internal interfaces. In the same spirit, random interface models for binary systems postulate self-assembly into bilayers and intro-... 

Recently an alternative approach for the description of the structure in systems with self-assembling molecules has been proposed in Ref. 68. In this approach no particular assumption about the nature of the internal interfaces or their bicontinuity is necessary. Therefore, within the same formahsm, localized, well-defined thin films and diffuse interfaces can be described both in the ordered phases and in the microemulsion. This method is based on the vector field describing the orientational ordering of surfactant, u, or rather on its curlless part s defined in Eq. (55). 

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