Supramolecular assembly and nanostructures of a series of luminol derivatives with aromatic/alkyl substituted groups in Langmuir-Blodgett films.

A series of functional luminol derivatives with aromatic and alkyl substituted groups has been designed and synthesized from the reaction of the corresponding chloride precursors with luminol. These compounds can be spread on water surface to form stable Langmuir films at the air-water interface. It has been found that UV and IR spectra confirmed the characteristic aromatic segment, imide group, and aromatic/alkyl substituted groups. In addition, for the interfacial assembly process of compounds with alkyl substituted groups, there are obvious spectral changes for the alkyl chains. AFM results indicated that various different aggregated domains may be fabricated in the transferred LB films. For all cases, the substituted groups in molecular structures have an important effect in regulating the aggregation mode and spectral changes in organized molecular films. The present results showed that the modified luminol derivatives may have potential application in functional material fields such as ECL sensor, which may give some insight to study the relationship between the molecular structures and supramolecular aggregation of amphiphiles in organized molecular films.