Concluding remarks: Faraday Discussions on Advances in supramolecular gels

Abstract

These concluding remarks summarise the Faraday Discussions that was held in Glasgow, Scotland, on Advances in supramolecular gels, between the 30th of April and the 2nd of May 2025. The meeting was organised by Prof. Dave Adams (University of Glasgow, UK) and Prof. Annela Seddon (University of Bristol, UK) who co-chaired the meeting, in collaboration with the Scientific Committee, Prof. Krishna K. Damodaran (University of Iceland, Iceland), Prof. Demetra Giuri (University of Bologna, Italy) and Prof. Xuehai Yan (Chinese Academy of Science, China). The meeting was organised in four main sections over the four day programme. These were broadly devoted to the characterising (Session 1), using (Session 2), designing (Session 3) of supramolecular gels, and multicomponent gel systems (in Session 4). A lively poster session with range of posters presented mainly by early career, students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as some more established researchers, ran throughout the meeting. The Faraday Discussions programme had contribution talks that highlighted the research area from the design and synthesis of (supramolecular) gels, formed from small organic gelators and bioinspired structures and conjugates, to the different types of characterisation techniques employed for such soft-material research, including the use of rheology, scattering techniques and a variety of imaging platforms, as well as computational studies. This was also completed by the contributions on the applications of functional soft materials with both established and emerging applications. Herein, I will provide a short introductory remark on this fast-growing research field, and a short summary of the work presented within the four sessions, along with the associated discussions that took place. I will then conclude with a brief personal focused discussion of what I consider the main points raised throughout the meeting associated with some of the challenges that this fast-growing research area is facing.