Dissipative self-assembly is an intriguing but challenging research topic in chemistry, materials science, physics, and biology because most functional self-assembly in nature, such as the organization and operation of cells, is actually an out-of-equilibrium system driven by energy dissipation. In this article, we successfully fabricated an I₂-responsive supra-amphiphile by a PEGylated poly(amino acid) and realize its dissipative self-assembly in batch reactor by coupling it with the redox reaction between NaIO₃ and thiourea, in which I₂ is an intermediate product. The formation and dissipative self-assembly of the supra-amphiphile can be repeatedly initiated by adding the mixture of NaIO₃ and thiourea, which herein acts as “chemical fuel”, while the lifetime of the transient nanostructures formed by the dissipative self-assembly is easily tuned by altering thiourea concentration in the “chemical fuel”. Furthermore, as an application demo, the dissipative self-assembly of the supra-amphiphile is examined to control dispersion of multiwalled carbon nanotubes in water, exhibiting a good performance of organic pollutant removal.

中文翻译：

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超两亲在间歇反应器中的燃料驱动耗散自组装

耗散性自组装是化学，材料科学，物理学和生物学中一个有趣但具有挑战性的研究课题，因为自然界中大多数功能性自组装（例如细胞的组织和操作）实际上是由以下因素驱动的失衡系统能量耗散。在本文中，我们成功地通过PEG化聚氨基酸制备了对I ₂敏感的超两亲物，并通过将其与NaIO ₃和硫脲之间的氧化还原反应偶联而实现了其在间歇反应器中的耗散自组装，其中I ₂是中间产品。通过添加NaIO ₃的混合物可以反复引发超两亲物的形成和耗散自组装。硫脲在这里用作“化学燃料”，而通过耗散自组装形成的瞬态纳米结构的寿命很容易通过改变“化学燃料”中的硫脲浓度来调节。此外，作为应用演示，研究了超两亲物的耗散自组装，以控制多壁碳纳米管在水中的分散，表现出良好的有机污染物去除性能。