Abstract:
Supramolecular polymerization has been inspired from biological systems such as microtubules
and actin filaments that self-assemble from small monomers and are functional in their aggregated
state. In synthetic systems, self-assembly of small molecules to construct supramolecular polymers
has been well investigated for understanding the mechanism of polymerization and role of the noncovalent
interactions. These understandings has enabled us to pre-program monomers to attain a
variety of morphologies and properties under thermodynamic control and however they lack in
temporal programming. On the other hand, biological systems which are the source of inspiration
for self-assembly have spatio-temporal control over their self-organization owing to the nonequilibrium
instability of these self-organized state. Herein, we discuss conventional
thermodynamic self-assembly based on their mechanism and a comprehensive review of various
strategies utilized to obtain assemblies under non-equilibrium and for a temporal control over
their self-organization.
