Timothy Swager and Jean Bouffard from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA have used built-in amphiphilicity of Poly(phenylene ethynylene)s (PPEs) to achieve supramolecular organization in conjugated polymers at the air-water interface, and in a liquid crystalline matrix. 

The branched amphiphilic PPEs were initially shown to form stable monolayers at the air-water interface, where the polymer chain adopted a planar face-on structure, with phenylene units lying cofacial with the air-water interface.

When the polymers were incorporated into lyotropic liquid crystal matrices, they retained their fluorescence, and the fluorescence was significantly red-shifted with respect to the polymers in solution. Swager and Bouffard explain that this is indicative of a planarised polymer chain conformation. The fluorescence is red-shifted due to extended pi-conjugation compared with the distribution of effective conjugation lengths that could be found in solution. 

The next stage for this work is to crosslink conjugated polymers that have self-assembled in lyotropic liquid crystals, to generate porous networks for vapour sensing and gas storage applications.