A Method to Quench Carbodiimide-Fueled Self-Assembly

In chemically fueled self-assembly, the activation and deactivation of molecules for self-assembly is coupled to a reaction cycle. In biological examples, these reactions are typically fast, such that the building blocks remain activated for mere seconds. In contrast, synthetic reaction cycles are slower for self-assembly, i. e., with half-lives on the order of minutes. In search of life-like, dynamic behavior in synthetic systems, several groups explore faster reaction cycles that form transient labile building blocks with half-lives of tens of seconds. These cycles show exciting properties, but brought about a new challenge, i. e., accurately analyzing the fast cycle is impossible with classical techniques. We thus introduce the notion of quenching chemical reaction cycles for self-assembly. As a model, we use the fast carbodiimide-fueled chemical reaction cycle and demonstrate a method that quenches all reactions immediately. We show its accuracy and demonstrate the application for several reaction cycles and a range of dissipative assemblies. Finally, we offer preliminary design rules to quench other chemically fueled reaction cycles.