Cooperative assembly of phosphole lipids and single-walled carbon nanotubes

Building hierarchical assemblies from multiple chemically disparate components remains a tremendous challenge. In this study, we explored the co-assembly of a series of amphiphilic phosphole lipids and single-walled carbon nanotubes. Our studies suggest that both the "tweezer-like" conformation and the size of the counteranion of phosphole lipids are critical for constructing such co-assemblies in solution. Processing in hydrocarbons in which the solvent molecules interact weakly with the phosphole lipid further stabilizes these co-assemblies and results in hexagonal structures not observed in the neat constituents alone. Partial removal of solvents results in the formation of gels, with which we are able to induce strong preferential alignment via shear; these gels exhibit anisotropic electrical conductivities in the solid state, with an electrical conductivity that is 4 orders of magnitude higher along the shear direction.