CL : Vol. 38 (2009) , No. 11 p.1010

Sparkling Morphological Changes and Spontaneous Movements of Self-assemblies in Water Induced by Chemical Reactions

Kentaro Suzuki¹⁾²⁾, Taro Toyota³⁾, Katsuto Takakura⁴⁾ and Tadashi Sugawara¹⁾²⁾

1) Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
2) Research Center for Life System as Complex Systems, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
3) Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University
4) Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Suzuka National College of Technology

(Received September 9, 2009)

This review covers the drastic morphological changes, including division or birthing dynamics, and even spontaneous movements performed by molecular self-assemblies constructed by reactive amphiphiles with the imine group that connects hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties. It turns out that the formation (dehydrocondensation) of such amphiphiles or their cleavage (hydrolysis) into individual moieties occurs depending on the reaction fields, such as in membranes, or at interfaces between water and self-assemblies constructed by the amphiphiles. Moreover these chemical conversions induce outstanding dynamics aforementioned. Hence these findings give a hint to understand hierarchical dynamics occurring in a living system.