Self-organizing nature

On a strong self-organizing nature of liquid crystals, spontaneous formation of nano-structure in molecular aggregation is also an important issue in research as an origin of superfunctionality in molecular materials. Recent studies on how to build-up such nano-structure in organic materials have shown the importance of application of liquid crystalline field. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been applied to this issue [10] and the wider variation in experimental approaches has been seen [11] in recent years. 

The self-organizing nature of liquid crystal polymers is reflected in their complex flow behavior. The relaxation phenomenon of lyotropic polymer solution after shear cessation leads to band texture morphology that can be further induced to isotropic materials. Future research should focus on solvents influence on band size implicitly related to the induced pattern in polymers with different structures. Another aspect that could be explored is the imidization of patterned polyimide precursors and those conditions in which the texture is still maintained. 

Syntheses of sterically modified biopolymers can clearly yield insights into the presuppositions and possibilities of biological self-organization processes of biopolymers far beyond general thermodynamic and kinetic descriptions of natural systems. 

A typical biomembrane consists largely of amphiphilic lipids with small hydrophilic head groups and long hydrophobic fatty acid tails. These amphiphiles are insoluble in water (<10 ° mol L ) and capable of self-organization into uitrathin bilaycr lipid membranes (BLMs). Until 1977 only natural lipids, in particular phospholipids like lecithins, were believed to form spherical and related vesicular membrane structures. Intricate interactions of the head groups were supposed to be necessary for the self-organization of several ten thousands of... 

Self-organized materials with high surface area and pore size 3-25 nm was produced used templating and coassembly. The highly porous nature of the ordered combined with low adsorption and emission in the visible spectrum, facile diffusion makes them good candidate for optical and chemical sensor and provide new avenues for encapsulation/ immobilization processes and solve the problems mentioned above. 

Vesicles [10, 11] these aggregates of insoluble natural or artificial amphiphiles in water can have various shapes (spherical, cylindrical). Depending on the preparation conditions, small unilamellar or large multilamellar vesicles can be produced. The structures meet the self-organization criterion, because they are, albeit on a long time scale, dynamic and not in thermodynamic equilibrium, which would in many cases be a macroscopically phase separated lamellar phase. 

The ability of XB to control recognition, self-organization, and self-assembly processes in the different phases of matter is clearly emerging in the literature. This chapter focusses on self-assembly in the solid phase, while the chapters of B. Duncan and A. Legon (in this volume) deal with the liquid crystalline phase and gas phase, respectively. Relatively few papers are reported in the literature on self-assembly processes in solution [66-68,207,208]. Several analytical techniques have been used to detect XB formation, to define its nature, to establish its energetic and geometric characteristics, and to reveal... 

Kniep R, Simon P (2007) Fluorapatite-Gelatine-Nanocomposites Self-Organized Morphogenesis, Real Structure and Relations to Natural Hard Materials. 270 73-125 Koenig BW (2007) Residual Dipolar Couplings Report on the Active Conformation of Rhodopsin-Bound Protein Fragments. 272 187-216 Kolusheva S, see Jelinek R (2007) 277 155-180... 

The latter is an interesting example of self-organizing chiral dendrimers. The construction of the dendrimer is based on the natural property of nucleic acids to recognize and specifically bind to complementary sequences. Pairwise hybridization of two designed DNA strands results in the formation of large monomers which have four single stranded arms and a double stranded waist (24, Fig. 12). 

Eigen, M. and Schuster, P. (1979), The Hypercycle. A Principle of Natural Self Organization, Springer, Berlin. 

Walsh, D. and Mann S. (1995) Fabrication of hollow porous shells of caldum carbonate from self-organizing media. Nature, 377, 320-323. 

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