Naturally occurring terpenoids can be utilized as renewable functional nano-entities yielding diversified supramolecular architectures via self-assembly.
Plant metabolites can serve as renewable chemicals for the development of a sustainable society. Terpenoids are the major component of over 500,000 plant secondary metabolites reported till date. Monoterpenoid (C10) to tetraterpenoid (C40) all the terpenoid have recently been shown to have nanometric lengths. Studies on the self-assembly of terpenoids, have drawn the attention of scientific community in recent years due to many of its potential and realized applications in medicine, drug delivery, pollutant capture, metal nanoparticle hybrid material, selective damage of cancer cells, etc. In this review, we have discussed the isolation of seven terpenoids from plants and their self-assembly properties in different liquids, even without functional transformation. The utilization of the resulting supramolecular architectures such as vesicles, spheres, flowers and fibrillar networks of nano- to micro-meter dimensions and gels have also been discussed paving the way for a green, renewable and sustainable world.
Critical vesicular concentration (CVC) of arjunolic acid in DMSO-water using hydrophobic pyrene as a fluorescent probe
Self-assembly of arjunolic acid, a naturally occurring 6-6-6-6-6 trihydroxytriterpenic acid, in bilary liquid mixtures has been reported yielding vesicles of nano to micrometer diameters (B.G. Bag, R. Majumdar, RSC Adv., 2014, 4, 53327-53334). Critical vesicular concentration (cvc) of arjunolic acid is reported here using the fluorescence probe of pyrene monomer. The cvc determined by this method in DMSO-water binary liquid mixtures at 2:1, 1:1, and 1:4 v/v ratio were determined to be 68 M, 57 M and 49 M respectively showing a lowering in the cvc’s with increasing percentage of water.
