A series of supramolecular gelators, DT79 and DT185, based on pyrene with alkyl
chain pyridine-2,6-dicarboxamides has been synthesized. All gelators show excellent
gelation ability in many organic solvents. A variety of spectroscopic methods have
been applied to identify the intermolecular interactions upon gel formation and
explore the photophysical properties. In dilute solution absorption and fluorescence
spectroscopy experiments, we found that DT79 and DT185 in cyclohexane both
aggregation and dissolved state. The primary driving forces for the gel formation are
intermolecular hydrogen bonding, aromatic π − π, interactions. The supramolecular
aggregates in these organogels are considered to be the J-type aggregation. SEM
morphologies on the xerogels reveal that the gelators self-assembled into fibers.
