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A series of eleven new N-acetyl glucosamine isoxazole derivatives were synthesized and analyzed for their self-assembling properties. These glycoconjugates are gelators for several solvents and eight compounds are able to form hydrogels, representing the first class of isoxazole based molecular hydrogelators. The metallogel formation and dye removal application were also studied. 

Carbohydrate-based low-molecular-weight gelators are interesting new materials with many potential applications. These compounds can be designed to include multiple stimuli-responsive functional groups. In this study, we designed and synthesized several chemically responsive bola-glycolipids and dimeric carbohydrate- and diarylethene-based photoswitchable derivatives. The dimeric glycolipids formed stable gels in a variety of solvent systems. The best performing gelators in this series contained decanedioic and dithienylethene (DTE) spacers, which formed gels in eight and nine of the tested solvents, respectively. The two new DTE-containing esters possessed interesting photoswitching properties and DTE derivative 7 was found to have versatile gelation properties in many solvents, including DMSO solutions at low concentrations. The gels formed by these compounds were stable under acidic conditions and tended to hydrolyze under basic conditions. Several gels were used to absorb rhodamine B and Toluidine blue from aqueous solutions. In this study, we demonstrated the rational design of molecular gelators which incorporated photoresponsive and pH responsive functions, leading to the discovery of multiple effective stimuli-responsive gelators. 

We investigate switching of photoluminescence from PbS quantum dots crosslinked with photochromic diarylethene molecules with different degree of halogenation.