Refinement of non-covalent interactions via hetero-seeded self-assembly for the pathway complexity control of perylene derivatives

The introduction of methodologies to amalgamate, shear, or fabricate structures could potentially lead to exceptionally remarkable architectures. In this work, three similar perylene-based molecules, PDI 1–3 , each modified with different alkyl chains, were synthesized to investigate the pathway complexity via hetero-seeded self-assembly. Delightfully, a type of remarkably active metastable nanowires assemblied from perylene-based molecule PDI 1 was obtained. Based on this, hierarchical heterojunction microsheets were fabricated using metastable nanowires derived from PDI 1 , initiated by hetero-seeds sourced from the perylene-based molecule PDI 2 in a "bottom-up" approach. Furthermore, the decomposition of the microsheet seed derived from PDI 3 was achieved, resulting in the formation of heterogeneous nanowires induced by the metastable nanowires from PDI 1 in a "top-down" approach. The decomposition and fabrication of the microsheet architectures were unveiled to be governed by the competitive π-interactions between seeds and monomers during the self-assembly process. This research is a powerful novel approach for assembling complex architectures and has enhanced the understanding of the molecular assembly growth process at the interface.