Anisotropic supramolecular plastics prepared from an undercooled liquid-crystalline phase of a cholesterol-based low-molecular-weight compound

Supramolecular plastics composed of low-molecular-weight compounds offer a promising pathway toward sustainable materials. However, achieving a macroscopic structural order and tuneable mechanical properties without relying on covalently bonded macromolecular components remains a significant challenge. We have developed a supramolecular plastic derived from a cholesterol-based low-molecular-weight compound, (3β)-cholest-5-en-3-yl dodecylcarbamate, that forms a metastable liquid-crystalline (LC) phase upon quenching from its isotropic melt. The LC phase displays sufficient fluidity at room temperature to permit bulk processing, for example, by compression; the material subsequently undergoes spontaneous crystallization to form a self-standing sheet. By controlling the quenching temperature and the incubation time prior to processing, we succeeded in endowing the sheet with molecular ordering that extended beyond the centimetre scale and, as a result, the sheet exhibited anisotropic mechanical properties. These findings establish a design strategy for creating processable, structurally tuneable, bulk materials exclusively from small molecules.